Conformal UHF SATCOM Antenna for Tactical Aircraft

Existing UHF SATCOM antennas are unsuitable for use on high performance tactical aircraft due to their size, weight, and/or aerodynamics. The proposed efort seeks to fill the Navy's need for conformal or minimal protrusion SATCOM antennas for their tactical aircraft. Two breadboard antennas, one broadband and one tunable, would be developed and demonstrated. The broadband element would be no larger than 16" dia. x 5" deep and would operate over both the transmit and receive bands simultaneously. The tunable antenna would be significantly smaller, and would use 4 59 6 fixed tuning steps to cover the two bands. Frequency information needed for tuning is shared by the UHF radio and the antenna via a digital interface. Technical objectives include the development of computational models for the antenna concepts, demonstration of two breadboard elements via hardware design, fabrication, and test, and a feasibility analysis based on the results