Blade Antenna Research Articles

A miniaturized airplane blade antenna for radio navigation and communication systems

Blade antennas are preferred antenna structures for airborne applications due to their compact size, lightweight and drag-reducing aerodynamic shape. In this paper, we present the design, simulation and realization of a miniaturized blade antenna requiring a small ground plane and covering the frequency band 0.8–1.1 GHz. To reduce air drag, the proposed antenna is placed inside an aerodynamically optimized airborne radome. The return loss, the radiation patterns and the realized gain of the proposed antenna are studied using HFSS simulations. The comparison of the simulated return loss and radiation patterns to their measured counterpart demonstrates a good agreement. A minimum realized gain of 3.6 dB was achieved at the frequency of 0.9 GHz.

Mutual Coupling Reduction in Airborne Co-Sited Blade Antennas Through Size-Constrained Vertical Soft Surfaces

Mutual Coupling Reduction in Airborne Co-Sited Blade Antennas Through Size-Constrained Vertical Soft Surfaces

DESIGN OF A UAV BLADE MONOPOLE WITH THE USE OF DIFFERENT RTADIATING ELEMENTS AND SIMULATION OF DRA ANTENNA

Because of its small size, light weight, and aerodynamic design that causes the least amount of drag blade monopole antennas are favored for usage in airborne applications. Consequently, their radiation patterns are unipolar and produce deep nulls in the upward direction. Such patterns will cause severe blind spots for the aircraft above and below this plane, which is undesirable for avionics networks. [1] To solve this problem, a dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) is attached to the blade antenna and thus a different design is formed. In this paper a rectangular DRA is used to illustrate the main idea.The antenna is housed inside the aerodynamically designed radome to reduce air drag (large dome-shaped structures which protect the radars from the bad weather conditions but at the same time allow the electromagnetic signals to be received by the radar without any distortion or attenuation). [11] An air core coil is also provided for DC grounding proposes. The antenna configuration is first optimized using HFSS based Ansys Electronics Desktop Student 2021 R2 simulation software and latter practically implemented. The comparison of simulated results is also presented in this paper.

Development of VHF-Band Conformal Antenna for UAV Mounting

In this paper, a VHF band conformal antenna for UAV mounting was developed. The proposed antenna was designed as an shape-adaptive structure by minimizing the antenna height to be advantageous in RCS reduction performance. As for the antenna radiator, the outer radiator was arranged around the inner radiator to apply the CRLH zeroth-order resonance structure. With this structure, the height of the antenna was minimized, and it was reduced by about 70 % compared to the existing blade antenna. In addition, for impedance matching, the intermediate frequency bandwidth of the VHF band was improved through the sleeve pin of the inner radiator, and the low frequency bandwidth of the VHF band was improved by applying an EMI shielding gasket to the shorting pin of the outer radiator. The proposed antenna was manufactured and measured to verify the performance of the device and the performance after UAV mounting. As a result, the standard was satisfied for the operating frequency.

Design and fabrication of an inverted hat antenna paired with a filled cavity for radio-navigation applications

AbstractAntennas installed on aircraft are used for communications as well as for various radio navigation systems such as direction finders, distance measuring systems, and altimeters. Generally, these systems use blade antennas operating in the L frequency band. Recently, inverted-hat empty section monopole antennas have been found to be good candidates for such uses. In this study, we propose a new design of inverted-hat antenna based on optimized elliptical shapes and a filled cavity. The dielectric material added in the cavity helps to improve the monopole stability and to adjust the resonant frequency of the antenna. The proposed antenna meets the distance measuring equipment requirements, namely an omnidirectional radiation pattern in the H-plane, a vertical polarization, a frequency band from 960 MHz to 1.22 GHz, and a gain better than 1 dB. This antenna is entirely made of aluminum in order to obtain a homogeneity with the aluminum fuselage. In addition, the solution proposed brings a better protection against weather conditions. The antenna performance is analyzed on the basis of simulation and measurement results.

ANALYSIS OF 5.8GHZ HELICAL ANTENNA FOR THE APPLICATION OF UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE

An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft with practically no human pilot. The real life utilizations of UAV are payload conveyance, trafc checking, moving items in apparently perilous climate and with the end goal of observation in armed force, naval force and ying corps. The parts utilized in UAV's are Radome, Antenna, Antenna handset regulator, Modulation and recurrence transformation unit, Data interface unit, Power control module, Lithium battery and Solar power band. The antenna are the main electronic parts of UAV. The antenna utilized in UAV are Patch antenna, Spiral antenna, SATCOM antenna, MFC antenna, Array antenna, Blade antenna and L-C Sector antenna and Helical antenna. Helical antenna is planned in the recurrence of 10GHz and its exhibition attributes are examined for the compelling correspondence in UAV.

An All-in-One Dual Band Blade Antenna for ADS-B and 5G Communications in UAV Assisted Wireless Networks.

This paper is aimed at the characterization and manufacturing of an SMA coaxial fed compact blade antenna with dual frequency characteristics for broadband applications on board of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs). This antenna is linearly polarized, and it combines the benefits of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and 5th Generation (5G) communications in one single element, covering both the 1.030–1.090 GHz and the 3.4–3.8 GHz bands thanks to a bent side and a ‘C’ shaped slot within the radiation element. Starting from the simulation outcomes on an ideal ground plane, the results are here extended to a bent ground plane and on two UAV commercial CAD models. Details of manufacturing of the antenna in both aluminium and FR-4 substrate materials are presented. The comparison between measurements and simulations is discussed in terms of return loss, bandwidth, gain, and radiation pattern. Results show an antenna with a low profile and a simple structure that can be employed in various wideband communication systems, suiting future UAV assisted 5G networks while being perfectly compliant with forthcoming ADS-B based Detect-And-Avoid (DAA) technologies in Unmanned Aerial Traffic Management (UTM).

Design of a broadband blade and DRA hybrid antenna with hemi-spherical coverage for wireless communications of UAV swarms

Blade antennas are widely used for airborne communications owing to their light weight and wide bandwidth. However, radiation pattern of a blade antenna is monopole-like and yields a deep null towards its top direction. This will cause serious blind spots for the aircraft towards its top and bottom directions, which is not desirable for future avionic networks. To solve this issue, a dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) is added to the blade antenna and forms a new design. A rectangular DRA is adopted in this paper to illustrate the main idea. The rectangular DRA operates in the lowest TE111 mode and its radiation pattern covers the high elevation angle region. The blade antenna, on the other hand, has a nearly omni-directional radiation pattern in the low elevation angle region. Combination of the DRA and blade antenna can provide a hemispherical coverage with relatively small ripples. A closed-form model is presented to explain the radiation mechanism of the hybrid antenna. For verification, a prototype antenna is designed, fabricated and measured. Its impedance bandwidth covers 1.3–2.4 GHz and its radiation patterns yield small ripples in the top hemi-sphere until 2.1 GHz.

Broadband Slotted Blade Dipole Antenna for Airborne UAV Applications

This paper presents a novel broadband dipole blade antenna for airborne unmanned aerial vehicle applications. Wideband performance and stable radiation pattern are achieved by the use of two perpendicular slots and two vertical tails. The vertical tails increase the excited surface current path and consequently increase the radiation efficiency of the antenna at lower frequencies. The feed line utilizes a matching circuit to achieve a wide impedance bandwidth, particularly at lower frequencies. The overall size of the antenna is $71\,\,\text {cm} \times 25\,\,\text {cm} \times 5$ cm. A prototype of the proposed antenna has been fabricated and tested. Measurements agree well with simulation results. Based on measurement results, the antenna impedance bandwidth for VSWR < 2.5 is 193.5% from 20 to 1200 MHz.

Characteristic Mode Assisted Placement of Antennas for the Isolation Enhancement

In this letter, the isolation between onboard antennas is investigated using characteristic mode analysis, which provides an intuitive insight for the antenna placement on large platforms. An analytical expression of the relationship between the platform modal excitation coefficient and the platform modal charge is derived under the condition of a coaxial feeding mechanism. It is revealed that the deployment position that leads to a maximum isolation is indicated by the platform modal charge. Based on this finding, a simple and efficient method for antenna placement on aircraft-like platforms is developed to enhance the isolation. Two examples with vertically polarized blade antennas are presented, in which two or three blade antennas can be deployed on the platforms. Both the numerical and experimental results show that the isolation is increased remarkably by the proposed method.

Novel and simple monopole blade antenna with ultra-wide bandwidth for avionics applications

In this paper a novel low profile radome enclosed monopole blade antenna is designed, fabricated and tested with ultra wide bandwidth for L-band, S-band and C-band applications. The antenna consists of a tapered blade mounted on a rectangular ground plane. Several circular slots are etched from the tapered blade to improve the bandwidth of the antenna. The antenna has a compact size, aero- dynamic shape and light weight and shows omnidirectional radiation patterns in azimuth plane, therefore it is suitable for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and avionics applications. The simulated and measurement results are presented and discussed in the paper and they are in close agreement with each other.

Novel and simple monopole blade antenna with ultra-wide bandwidth for avionics applications

In this paper a novel low profile radome enclosed monopole blade antenna is designed, fabricated and tested with ultra wide bandwidth for L-band, S-band and C-band applications. The antenna consists of a tapered blade mounted on a rectangular ground plane. Several circular slots are etched from the tapered blade to improve the bandwidth of the antenna. The antenna has a compact size, aero- dynamic shape and light weight and shows omnidirectional radiation patterns in azimuth plane, therefore it is suitable for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and avionics applications. The simulated and measurement results are presented and discussed in the paper and they are in close agreement with each other.

Experimental Investigations of a Novel Lightweight Blade Antenna for UAV Applications [Antenna Applications Corner

Small, lightweight, and broadband antennas are a growing need for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms due to the increasing demand of highly integrated systems for both electronic warfare (EW) and communication-oriented applications. In this article, an experimental characterization of a compact printed passive wide-band dipole antenna is presented. The main advantages of this design are the reduction of both the height and the weight of the antenna while keeping the structure as tough as possible from an environmental point of view with the only drawback being a tradeoff with respect to voltage-standing wave ratio (VSWR) performances. The simplicity (no lumped passive components are used to match the antenna input impedance to 50 X) and performance effectiveness of the proposed antenna is such that it avoids a complicated screening process among different phase-matched sets of radiating elements. The experimental characterization was performed through a near-field measurement setup, showing excellent agreement with numerical fullwave simulations.

Design of a Blade Antenna for UAV Applications

Design of a Blade Antenna for UAV Applications

Design of a Blade Antenna Embedded in Low-Cost Dielectric Substrate

A design of a blade antenna embedded in low-cost dielectric substrate (FR4) and operating at 4.97 GHz is the subject of this paper. The antenna design is accomplished using parametric analysis in the HFSS TM software, where the antenna dimensions are changed and it is observed how the changes affect figures-of-merit like input impedance, reflection coefficient and radiation patterns. The antenna prototype is presented, as well as, a comparison between experimental and theoretical results.

Installed Performance Assessment of Blade Antenna by means of the Infinitesimal Dipole Model

This paper presents an accurate and simple model to predict the radiation pattern of a blade antenna installed on an aircraft. Based on the far field radiation pattern of the blade antenna on a ground plane, an equivalent infinitesimal dipole model (IDM) is built. Taking into consideration the basic geometry and some physical characteristics of the antenna to be modeled, the proposed approach has overcome one of the major problems of the classic IDM by reducing the number of parameters to be optimized. In order to validate its application in electromagnetic large structures problems, an aircraft is chosen as a case study. Good agreement with the radiation patterns is obtained between the proposed model and a blade antenna, where its accuracy and reduction in computational cost is verified.

진폭-위상 복합비교 기법과 상관형 위상비교 기법의 방향탐지 정확도 분석

In this paper, we present the direction finding accuracy of correlative interferometer method and amplitude-phase comparison method. Spiral antennas are used for amplitude-phase comparison method and blade antennas are used for correlative interferometer method. Those are made for uniform circular array (UCA) direction finding antenna systems. We simulate the accuracy of azimuth angle with 3 antennas UCA when SNR is 20 dB and baseline is 0.5 wave length. Correlative interferometer method has better accuracy than amplitude-phase comparison method.

Limits on foreground subtraction from chromatic beam effects in global redshifted 21 cm measurements

Foreground subtraction in global redshifted 21 cm measurements is limited by frequency-dependent (chromatic) structure in antenna beam patterns. Chromatic beams couple angular structures in Galactic foreground emission to spectral structures that may not be removed by smooth functional forms. We report results for simulations based on two dipole antennas used by the Experiment to Detect the Global EoR Signature (EDGES). The residual levels in simulated foreground-subtracted spectra are found to differ substantially between the two antennas, suggesting that antenna design must be carefully considered. Residuals are also highly dependent on the right ascension and declination of the antenna pointing, with RMS values differing by as much as a factor of 20 across pointings. For EDGES and other ground-based experiments with zenith pointing antennas, right ascension and declination correspond directly to the local sidereal time and the latitude of the deployment site, hence chromatic beam effects should be taken into account when selecting sites. We introduce the "blade" dipole antenna and show, via simulations, that it has better chromatic performance than the "fourpoint" antenna previously used for EDGES. The blade antenna yields 1-5~mK residuals across the entire sky after a 5-term polynomial is removed from simulated spectra, whereas the fourpoint antenna typically requires a 6-term polynomial for comparable residuals. For both antennas, the signal-to-noise ratio of recovered 21 cm input signals peaks for a 5-term polynomial foreground fit given realistic thermal noise levels.

Novel Low Profile Wideband Monopole Antenna for Avionics Applications

In this communication, a new broadband antenna with a very low profile is proposed. The antenna inherits the wide bandwidth of the blade antenna, while its height is considerably reduced to 0.03 λ0, where λ0 is the wavelength of the lowest operating frequency. This new design consists of a top loaded monopole with several shorting pins and an inductive loading. The antenna resonates at two distinctive frequencies determined by the shorting pins and inductive loading and the wideband characteristic is achieved by the control of the resonance separations. The inductive loading is created by a shorted metallic disk embedded into the antenna structure. This new method of inductive loading facilitates the antenna fabrication while the physical size of the antenna is kept compact. A prototype was fabricated and its VSWR and far field radiation pattern were measured. The antenna provides a bandwidth of 17% for VSWR smaller than 3. Also, a minimum realized gain of 1 dBi was achieved over the frequency bandwidth in which the antenna is well matched.

VHF-UHF 대역 블레이드 안테나의 성능 평가 및 분석

본 논문에서는 항공기 안테나로 사용되는 블레이드 안테나의 성능 평가를 위한 항공기 블레이드 안테나의 평가 프로세스를 제안하였다. 평가 프로세스에 사용된 다수의 평가 항목들은 항공기의 비행 시 안정된 통신을 위한 필수 성능 요소들을 고려하여 결정하였다. 제안된 성능 평가 프로세스는 먼저 블레이드 안테나의 그라 운드를 설정하고, 정합 성능을 평가하였다. 또한, 항공 시나리오를 고려하여 주 통신 영역을 제한하고, 주파수 대역별 요구되는 최소 복사 이득을 도출하였다. 최종적으로 제안된 성능 평가 프로세스는 실제 항공기에 운용 되는 상용 블레이드 안테나에 적용하였으며, 평가 프로세스의 결과를 바탕으로 항공기 적용 적합도를 도출하였다. In this paper, we propose a performance evaluation process of aircraft blade antennas. The process consists of various sub-processes that should be considered for a stable communication link with the base station. The process begins with the settlement of the ground shape and size to evaluate the impedance matching characteristics of a stand-alone antenna. Next, the main communications area of the antenna is determined by considering a flight scenario, and then the minimum gain requirements of the antenna are derived in the operating frequency band. Finally, the proposed evaluation process is applied for a commercial aircraft blade antenna. The results demonstrate that the proposed process is suitable to be adopted for the evaluation of aircraft blade antennas.