Physically Small Confetti Antennas for High-Power Directive Applications

The proposing team has developed an innovative antenna technology called the “Confetti” antenna that is particularly suited to this application, offering potentially revolutionary performance in antenna efficiency, bandwidth, and compactness. We propose to design and optimize a compact “Confetti” antenna for high-power, directive applications. This antenna will have a volume of only 500 cm3 and maximum linear dimension of 30 cm, and it will be tunable to operate efficiently over 2 to 30 MHz, with up to 1 kW of pulsed transmission power and 3 KHz instantaneous bandwidth. The Confetti antenna has conductors optimized in all three dimensions, making it theoretically capable of producing any desired radiation pattern. The automated design method and resulting generality of this class of antennas promise to not only accommodate a wide range of specific applications but also to provide performance that approaches optimal for each application. Thus, the innovation described in this proposal is both a class of antennas, along with the methodology and tools to design them, as well as specific designs of compact, high-power, directive HF antennas.