Smart Single or Multiple Beam Forming Antennas in the 1 to 2 GHz Range

Current airborne and ground vehicular antennas cannot meet the Army's needs in Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) wideband networking waveform (WNW), secure wireless local area network (SWLAN) and flying local area network (FLAN) applications. This SBIR topic A03-120 addresses this problem by developing smart beamforming antennas covering JTRS bands over 1-2.5 GHz. The difficulties in developing these antennas are due to the requirements of multi-band/broadband, low profile and conformability suitable for mounting on a military airborne and/or ground platform, as well as low cost. In Phase I Wang Electro-Opto Corporation (WEO) demonstrated the feasibility with a breadboard smart beam-forming traveling-wave array antenna. In the proposed Phase-II, WEO will design, fabricate, test and deliver two airworthy prototype smart beam-steered array antennas; one with a medium gain (10 dBi) and the other with a low gain (5-6 dBi). The array antennas, to be mounted on the belly of an airborne vehicle, are low-cost full systems including embedded GPS/INS subsystem that provides antenna heading and location data to the beam steering computer to steer the antenna beam in the WLAN environment.