skip to main content

Explore Research Products in the NSF-PAR

Title: A modified feed U‐slot patch antenna array for airborne very high frequency ice‐penetrating radar
Abstract

This article presents a 3 × 2 element U‐slot patch antenna array with modified feed for airborne very high frequency applications. The antenna array is designed to upgrade the Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder/Imager on board the National Aeronautics and Space Administration DC‐8 aircraft. The antenna array is placed in an aerodynamic fairing structure designed for airborne operation. The major objective is to design an antenna array with a wider impedance bandwidth compared to the existing array. Impedance bandwidth improvement is achieved in two steps. First step is by increasing the bandwidth of antenna element itself and the second step is by utilizing the mutual coupling between the elements of the array. To avoid the problem associated with a rigid probe feed, a modified flexible feed is designed, which can withstand the atmospheric and aerodynamic forces at high altitudes. A matching network is used at each antenna element in this array to further improve the impedance matching. The final antenna array with fairing structure achieved a fractional bandwidth of the 62.5% at center frequency of 243.75 MHz.

  more » « less
NSF-PAR ID:
10459356
Author(s) / Creator(s):
 ;  ;  ;  ;  
Publisher / Repository:
Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Microwave and Optical Technology Letters
Volume:
62
Issue:
1
ISSN:
0895-2477
Page Range / eLocation ID:
p. 378-386
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ( , Small Satellite Conference, Logan, Utah)
    null (Ed.)
    This paper presents the design of a dual-band printed planar antenna for deep space CubeSat communications. The antenna system will be used with a radio for duplex operation in a CubeSat, which can be used for a lunar mission or any deep space mission. While a high-gain CubeSat planar antenna/array is always desired for a deep space mission, high-performance ground stations are also required for robust communication links. For such a mission, the X-band is the appropriate frequency for the downlink communication, which is very challenging in the case of deep space communication compared to the uplink communication. At this frequency, the antenna size can have small enough dimension to form an array to obtain high-gain directional radiations for the successful communication, including telemetry and data download. NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) has the largest and most sensitive 70 meterdiameter antenna that can be considered for this type of mission for reliability. DSN has uplink and downlink frequency of operations in 7.1-GHz and 8.4-GHz bands, respectively, which are separated by approximately 1.3 GHz. A straight forward approach is to use two antennas to cover uplink and downlink frequencies. However, CubeSats have huge space constraints to accommodate science instruments and other subsystems and commonly utilize outside faces for solar cells. Therefore, in this paper, we have proposed a planar directional circularly polarized antenna with a single feed that operates at both uplink and downlink DSN frequencies. Simulated 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth of 165 MHz, from 7064 MHz to 7229 MHz for uplink, and that of 183 MHz, from 8325 MHz to 8508 MHz for downlink, are achieved. Also, a wide impedance bandwidth of 23.86% (VSWR < 2) is obtained. From this single probe-fed stacked patch antenna, peak RHCP gain of 9.24 dBic can be achieved. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ( , 2023 IEEE Texas Symposium on Wireless and Microwave Circuits and Systems (WMCS))
    This paper presents a highly efficient single-layer substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) based leaky-wave antenna (LWA) for the millimeter-wave unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication system. The leaky wave-based radiating part of the unit cell includes a combination of two Y-shaped slots with 46° stretched V etched on the top SIW, resulting in a W-shaped structure. The proposed array achieves a high gain of 13.47 dBi for the frequency range of 56.3 GHz to 63.4 GHz covering the unlicensed band, with a fine matching level below -21 dB. Using the leaky wave antenna's frequency scanning capability, the proposed antenna exhibits a scanning range of 38°. The designed antenna shows a promising solution for the UAV-to-UAV applications due to its low profile and compactness and is well-suited for the single-layer low-cost printed circuit board fabrication process using Rogers RT 5880 as substrate. The radiation pattern for the achieved bandwidth shows an average half-power angular beamwidth of 12.1°, resulting in a radiation efficiency of more than 62% for the elements arranged uniformly at a distance of 0.456λ . Following an overall low-profile compact size of 6.48×4 λ corresponding to 3.24×0.2 cm and improved performance, the antenna achieves an elliptical polarization at 60 GHz for an axial ratio equal to 3.5 dBi. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ( , Sensors)

    This paper presents a single-fed, single-layer, dual-band antenna with a large frequency ratio of 4.74:1 for vehicle-to-vehicle communication. The antenna consists of a 28 GHz inset-fed rectangular patch embedded into a 5.9 GHz patch antenna for dual-band operation. The designed dual-band antenna operates from 5.81 to 5.99 GHz (Dedicated Short Range Communications, DSRC) and 27.9 to 30.1 GHz (5G millimeter-wave (mm-wave) band). Furthermore, the upper band patch was modified by inserting slots near the inset feed line to achieve an instantaneous bandwidth of 4.5 GHz. The antenna was fabricated and measured. The manufactured prototype operates simultaneously from 5.8 to 6.05 GHz and from 26.8 to 31.3 GHz. Notably, the designed dual-band antenna offers a high peak gain of 7.7 dBi in the DSRC band and 6.38 dBi in the 5G mm-wave band.

     
    more » « less
  4. ; ( , 2019 IEEE Texas Symposium on Wireless and Microwave Circuits and Systems (WMCS))
    In this paper, a 4 ×4-element waveguide-aperture array antenna is designed for applications in the 60 GHz band. To simplify the design process of the feed network, instead of using a conventional waveguide power divider, an efficient approach is proposed where the antenna is fed with two layers of back cavities to distribute power uniformly among the array aperture. The connection between cavities is obtained by a set of coupling slots. A standard WR-15 rectangular waveguide is designed to excite the antenna at the input port over the operating frequency. Furthermore, to improve the antenna gain characteristics and reduce size, array aperture is loaded with a dielectric plate. The most significant advantage of using this design is its efficient radiation patterns and the ability to decrease complexity of feeding network. Simulated results demonstrate that the antenna gain is larger than 25 dB over the frequency range from 58 to 64 GHz. This high gain antenna combined with the simplicity of feeding network is greatly advantageous to millimeter wave applications. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ( , 2023 United States National Committee of URSI National Radio Science Meeting (USNC-URSI NRSM))
    In this paper, a simple, and compact CPW-fed circularly polarized antenna is presented. The proposed antenna consists of a modified “S” shaped patch which has slots in three different places along with a slot in the ground plane. These slots contribute in increasing the bandwidth of the axial ratio. The antenna has a 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 10.47% (4.07 GHz–4.52 GHz) and an impedance bandwidth of 17.53% (3.8 GHz – 4.53 GHz) covering the full region of axial ratio band. Moreover, this antenna is designed using PET paper which makes it flexible in nature and the first flexible antenna in discussed frequency range to the best of author’s knowledge. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email