Conformal Impulse Receive Antenna Arrays

Conformal arrays are of great importance in a variety of applications. The ability of the antenna array to "conform" to the surface of a host platform is of great benefit primarily because of its compactness and non-obtrusiveness (reducing drag) and thus decreasing operational costs, implying that, for example, airborne platforms, such as fixed wing aircraft, including UAVs and helicopters can maintain their designed aerodynamic characteristics while hosting an array antenna. It should be pointed out at the outset that Pro-Tech's Phase I objective is to develop a conformal impulse "timed-array" antenna, operating in a transient regime and covering a wide frequency band spanning an approximately 200 MHz-2 GHz range. Our goal is to build and test two small-scale prototype impulse arrays capable of operating not only in a "receive" (passive) mode, but also in a "transmit" ("active") mode, thus significantly exceeding the requirements of this SBIR effort.