A Novel Approach towards the Designing of an Antenna for Aircraft Collision Avoidance System

Abstract

TCAS/ACAS (Traffic/Aircraft Collision Avoidance System) is an airborne system designed to increase cockpit awareness of nearby aircraft and to service as a last defense against mid-air collisions between the aircrafts. In the existing system, four monopole stub elements are used as TCAS directional antenna and one blade type element is used as TCAS Omni-directional antenna. The transmission and reception frequencies of the TCAS antenna are 1.03GHz and 1.09GHz respectively. The existing TCAS antenna has some drawbacks such as low gain, large beamwidth, frequency and beam tuning/scanning issues etc. Antenna issues like unwanted signals reception may create difficulties in identifying the possible threats. In this paper, the focus is on the design and development of a novel Microstrip Antenna Array which can be used for TCAS/ACAS application. Two proposed antenna models are presented here – a Unit Element Dual Feed Microstrip Dual Patch Slotted Antenna and a Compact Microstrip Antenna Array. These are designed in CST tool to meet the current needs of aircraft Collision Avoidance System and to overcome the possible limitations associated with the existing techniques. The performance and other antenna characteristics have been explored from the simulation results followed by the antenna fabrication and measurement. A good Reflection Coefficient and VSWR with proper 50Ω Impedance Matching, narrow Beamwidth, perfect Directional Radiation Pattern, high Gain and Directivity at the operating frequencies make this proposed antenna a good candidate for TCAS application. The proposed antenna would be expected to meet the requirements of the advanced avionics standards in terms of design simplicity, lightweight and high performance.