Conformal Ultra Wideband ESM Antenna

Ultra Wide Band (UWB) antennas are needed in many applications, including impulse radars, Ground Penetrating Radars (GPR), communications, EW and ELINT/ESM. Fidelity of an antenna in pulse mode is particularly important in radar applications because it requires linear phase and stable frequency responses to obtain accurate range information for such measurements as wide area surveillance, fixed/moving target indication, synthetic aperture radar, etc. This proposal addresses the design and development of an ultra wideband antenna set for airborne radar/surveillance applications that will operate in VHF to UHF bands. In this effort, we propose novel techniques for designing a conformal ultra wideband antenna that will exhibit satisfactory gain and impedance performance over the entire frequency band of interest. We use conformal ultra wideband structures and perform optimizations using the Genetic Algorithm (GA). During Phase I, we use numerical modeling techniques to design such an antenna and provide its performance characteristics. The development, fabrication and demonstration of the hardware antenna will be performed during Phase II.