Future Antennas

The available space for antennas located in the OE-538 mast is extremely limited. The gain and bandwidth performance of antennas are ultimately limited by their size. This limited gain and bandwidth constrains the maximum communication data rate for submarines. With the increasing communication requirements planned for the OE-538 mast (e.g. Iridium), future antennas in the OE-538 mast will need to make more efficient use of the limited available aperture. Fortunately, there are some opportunities for better utilization of the aperture within the OE-538 mast. For example, the area in the AFT portion of the radome (behind the backbone) can be utilized to enhance the azimuthal directivity of the UHF antenna. Another example is that both GPS and Iridium can utilize the space currently allocated for the GPS antenna. A single antenna in this area can easily cover both GPS bands and the Iridium L-band. A second antenna stacked on top can accommodate Ku-band signals. Toyon has extensive experience designing antennas for the OE-538 mast. Toyon proposes to use this experience to investigate two possible future antennas for the mast: 1) dipole elements behind the backbone to enhance UHF antenna gain and 2) an antenna that incorporates both GPS and Iridium. BENEFITS: The proposed project will improve the state-of-the-art in shared apertures. For the U.S. defense community, this provides a means for better utilizing the limited space on military platforms. For the commercial sector, it provides a means to incorporate satellite communication and GPS on a single antenna.