Development of an Improved Wing-Integrated Airborne Antenna Array with Applications to Future Wing Sizing

摘要

This paper presents an improved design of a wing-integrated airborne antenna array. Three low-profile antenna types were examined as part of an initial trade study, and it was determined that a planar dipole antenna offset from a ground plane offered the best compromise between antenna performance, dimensional sensitivity, and aircraft performance. Priority of the design was placed on antenna performance, and as a result, while the final design resulted in a gain improvement of over 6 dB, this improvement came at the expense of increased drag, which is expected to reduce the vehicle range by 13.6%. This case study motivated a study in which sensor performance requirements were used in the preliminary design process for wing sizing. Relationships for wing span, wing chord, and thickness are derived from extensive parametric EM simulations based on optimum antenna performance. It is expected that these equations would be used after an initial wing-loading design point has been selected to provide the user guidance from a sensor performance perspective on determining an ideal aspect ratio.