Investigation of Conformal High-Impedance Ground Planes

摘要

Applique antennas are a long range vision for military vehicles because they are lighter, quicker to replace, less expensive, and can have better performance than conventional antennas. Two newly reported high-impedance ground planes have potential to begin the realization of the applique antenna vision and each is investigated for use with thin conformal antenna structures. Bistatic reflection measurements completely characterize the high-impedance region of planar, thumbtack high-impedance ground planes, and periodic moment method models validate the measurement results. Rigorous planar and conformal surface wave coupling measurements clarity the reported photonic band gap behavior of the thumbtack high-impedance ground plane, and give evidence that the published surface wave suppression results may in fact be inconclusive. In addition, an analysis of variance test identifies the optimum antenna frequency for horizontal wire antenna applications. Broadband antenna applications are explored using a printed log-periodic wire antenna, but unpredicted losses outside the high-impedance region produced inconclusive results and prevented the conformal antenna measurements.