High Performance Miniature Antennas for Hand-Held Personal Communications Systems

This proposal describes an approach for identifying advanced concepts and innovative technologies which will, with high confidence, lead to the subsequent development of covert/low profile, miniature, efficient, robust, reconfigurable/adaptable and inexpensive antennas suitable for a variety of existing and emerging hand-held VHF/UHF radio terminals. Our methodology is structured so as to identify at least two candidates that have a high potential for successful development and dual-use applications for Phase II prototype fabrication and testing. Innovative approaches sharing existing elements or enclosures are proposed coupled with novel antenna matching techniques and materials. The envisioned hemispheric coverage antenna will be capable of supporting VHF/UHF terrestrial cellular and LEO systems using linear polarization at VHF and circular polarization at UHF. During Phase I we propose to: define performance goals and identify suitable legacy/migratory terminals, develop performance criteria for comparing and down selecting candidates, identify candidate physical designs, perform an analysis of the candidates' electrical characteristics and a comparative performance evaluation. This work will be documented in a final report describing the results of our research to include Phase II antenna and host commercial terminal candidates and a plan for fabrication, integration, and test. Low-risk candidate concepts and technologies for miniature, low profile, covert, efficient, inexpensive, rugged, adaptable VHF/UHF antennas will provide both the required military capability using hand-held RF terminals and improved antennas for the commercial market: wireless PCS, pagers, cellular telephones and mobile SATCOM.