FALCON: Flexible Antennas Leveraging Conductive Optimized Networks

Novel conformal antennas are of significant importance to the Navy due to their ability to seamlessly integrate with various platforms while offering improved performance and stealth capabilities. These antennas can be designed to conform to the shape of aircraft, ships, and other vehicles, reducing aerodynamic drag and visual signatures. Conformal antennas also enable the installation of a greater number of antennas on a single platform without compromising flight performance or requiring expensive design modifications. The development of wideband conformal antennas further enhances their versatility, allowing for reconfiguration into multiple narrow band systems when needed.A conformal antenna offers significant benefits over traditional flush mounted or embedded planar antennas in terms of efficient space utilization, reduced fuel/battery consumption, reduced operational costs, and improved stealth. Despite significant technological progress, challenges persist in manufacturing, mass production, and maintenance of such high-precision conformal array antennas, particularly in the microwave and millimeter wave frequencies to meet the stringent requirements and superior performance needed in military operations. Towards this, we plan to use dielectric substrates with low and uniform dielectric constant values between 6 and 24 GHz and non-magnetic conductive inks to improve range, and to alleviate radiation efficiency problems, respectively. This will be achieved by evaluating the performance of novel MXene inks deposited on flexible substrates using established technology.