Wideband Efficient Dual Polarized High Frequency (HF) Communication Antenna

This program is the next step in the development of a wideband dual polarized HF antenna covering 3 to 30 MHz supporting transmit and receive functions with instantaneous bandwidth of 10 MHz. A prototype design was developed in Phase I of this program. This design included the use of lossy impedance matching techniques for the horizontal and vertical transmit antennas. This ground based antenna design is easily packaged to be deployed in a tactical environment. In this Phase II program, the antenna elements will be prototyped and deployed for testing to obtain the antenna characteristics in numerous weather environments and ionosphericconditions. Using the results of the ground testing, an aircraft version antenna design will be developed using a combination of computational electromagnetics software, numerical electromagnetics code, and advanced design software. This antenna design will be applicable to large strategic aircraft. A commercialization strategy is provided demonstrating how the resulting antenna design can be used in government and commercial systems applications.