Conical Slot Antenna and Related Antennas Suitable for Use with an Aircraft with Inflatable Wings

摘要

Airborne UWB radar systems require receive antennas that can be printed or mounted onto an inflatable wing. Such antennas need to reach as low as VHF frequencies, and must be positioned to look to the side of the aircraft. To satisfy these requirements, a tapered slot antenna (TSA) looking off the wingtip has been proposed. However, a conventional TSA receives only horizontal polarization. Here, we describe a new form of TSA, the conical slot antenna (CSA), which exhibits vertical polarity above and below the horizon. to test the approach, we built and tested a 1/8th scale model of a CSA. We observed a clean impulse response with FWHM of less than 70 ps. the maximum gain for both polarizations is between 0 and 10 dBi from 4 to 12 GHz. The return loss, however, is higher than we would like over most of the frequency range. Finally, we discuss a number of alternative concepts for mounting antennas onto UAVs with inflatable wings.