Wideband Conformal Antenna

As Joint Counter Radio Frequency IED Electronic Warfare (JCREW) technology becomes increasingly prolific in military applications for ground forces, there is a corresponding requirement to develop antenna systems that accommodate present and foreseeable integration and performance challenges for these systems. While existing antenna systems for JCREW applications have demonstrated the ability to provide acceptable performance on a wide variety of ground mobile platforms, each of these platforms has different impacts on – and experiences effects due to – the desired performance of these systems. In order to achieve more uniform performance and seamless integration for future JCREW systems, the focus of this effort is on conformal vehicle-mounted antennas, as they present the most significant technical challenges to meeting these goals. To overcome these challenges, technological advances must be made to develop antenna hardware that can be readily integrated onto a wide variety of platforms without compromising EW performance or the performance of existing systems. A natural approach to simultaneously addressing these problems is to use conformally-mounted antennas. Specifically, if antennas tailored to JCREW requirements can be mounted on the broad outward-facing surfaces common to military ground vehicles, they will provide techniques for addressing both electrical and mechanical challenges experienced in current systems.