Conformal Impulse Receive Antenna Arrays

The main objective of this Phase-II effort is to build upon the results of our Phase-I effort to design, fabricate and demonstrate the performance of wideband “conformal receive antenna” that has the potential for integration on to a notional UAV. Our Conformal receive antenna will be installed on a realistic piece of a structural element of a generic UAV platform, and tested for its performance in the frequency range of 200 MHz-2 GHz. We have considered the Global Hawk as a potential airborne platform. Northrop Grumman Corporation is serving as one of the subcontractors in providing us the design data of a structural element of a notional UAV platform. Knowing the electrical properties of this element, our conformal antenna will be tailored to perform in this environment. Conformal array will be designed, fabricated and tested in this effort. The design goal is to cover a frequency range of 200 MHz to 2 GHz and the antenna elements are basically planar bow-tie antennas. The elements are electrically interconnected, with the entire array serving to receive the lower frequencies, while individual element receives the higher frequencies resulting in the desired 10 to 1 band ratio. The array elements will be optimized and performance in terms of TDR, S11, VSWR and antenna receiving patterns (same as transmitting patterns) will be measured and optimized.