Abstract
An active skin antenna with structural load-bearing and electromagnetic functions is usually installed in the structural surface of mobile vehicles such as aircrafts, warships, and high-speed train. This paper presents the design, fabrication, and testing of a novel active skin antenna which consists of an encapsulation shell, antenna skin, and RF and beam control circuits. The antenna skin which consists of the facesheet, honeycomb, array framework, and microstrip antenna elements was designed by using Bayesian optimization, in order to improve the design efficiency. An active skin antenna prototype with 32 microstrip antenna elements was fabricated by using a hybrid manufacturing method. In this method, 3D printing technology was applied to fabricate the array framework, and the different layers were bonded to form the final antenna skin by using traditional composite process. Some experimental testing was conducted, and the testing results validate the feasibility the proposed antenna skin structure. The proposed design and fabrication technique is suitable for the development of conformal load-bearing antenna or smart skin antenna installed in the structural surface of aircraft, warships, and armored vehicles.
Highlights
Over the last decade, structural, material, and antenna designers have collaborated to integrate the microstrip antennas and microwave circuits into the structural surfaces of the aircraft, warship, and armored vehicles
Many researchers have dedicated to the investigation of the skin antenna and proposed different concepts such as a conformal load-bearing antenna [4,5,6], structurally integrated antenna [7, 8], structurally embedded vascular antenna [9, 10], three-dimensionally integrated microstrip antenna [11,12,13,14], and composite antenna [15,16,17]
The antenna array consists of 32 microstrip antenna elements and an array framework fabricated by using 3D printing technology, and every antenna element is embedded into the array framework using the adhesive bonding technology
Summary
Structural, material, and antenna designers have collaborated to integrate the microstrip antennas (or planar spiral antennas) and microwave circuits into the structural surfaces of the aircraft, warship, and armored vehicles. This multidisciplinary effort has developed a new high payoff technique known as the skin antenna [1,2,3]. The basic structure of the passive skin antenna is a sandwich construction consisting of factsheets, honeycomb core, microstrip or spiral antenna elements, and feeding networks.
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