High Voltage Antenna Protection for Hand-held and Man-pack Radios

Linking units across the battlefield requires hand-held or man-pack radios with 8 to 10 feet whip antennas or 3 to 4 feet blade antennas. While long antenna lengths are necessary to reduce radio power requirements and preserve the radios battery life, they also pose potential shock hazards to Marines using them on the ground or in vehicle turrets. If contacted with low-hanging power distribution lines, which are often reported in todays battlefield environment, fatal amounts of electricity can be conducted by the antenna through the radio as well as the operator. Under the Phase I program, METSS demonstrated the technical feasibility of addressing this critical safety issue by using commercially available materials to create an integrated covering for both blade and whip antenna designs that provided 35KV RMS protection without adversely affecting the antennas radiation pattern omnidirectional gain across the frequency range of interest (i.e., 2 to 88 MHz). The protective system is non-permanent and it can be easily retrofit to existing antennas. The antenna protective material and application methods will be optimized under the proposed Phase II program. System level testing will be conducted to ensure system compatibility and performance and demonstrate system performance under operationally relevant conditions.