Embedded Co-Located Antenna Elements to Increase Pattern Coverage and Effectively Mitigating Interference for Improved Communications

The future role of military ground and air vehicles is focused on wireless communications. These vehicles must accommodate a variety of sensors as well as antennas, not to mention traditional payloads such as fuel, weapons, and personnel. The integration of antennas on the vehicle is one of the largest challenges since the performance can be greatly impacted depending on mounting location. The ideal mounting locations are thus crowded with numerous antennas that pose a co-site and blockage problems. This dictates the need for a wideband efficient antenna that can operate over various frequency bands and waveforms while sharing a single mounting location. Most challenging, is the need for a small form factor (less than 10"height or smaller) for air vehicles. These frequency bands and waveforms include SINCGARS 30-88 MHz, VHF AM / ATC 116-174 MHz, UHF-AM / HAVEQUICK 225-400 MHz, Public Safety 450-512 MHz, and WNW / SRW 1200-2500 MHz. FIRST RF, a leader in multi-band antennas, proposes two parallel paths to achieve the required performance. One path provides a unique multi element multi-band solution inside of a proven blade radome meeting the height requirements. The second path provides an embedded antenna utilizing advanced antenna and materials concepts.