Analisys of Conformal Antennas for Avionics Applications

Abstract

Conformal antennas might have an important impact on communication and navigation applications on aircraft, ships and other vehicles. This thesis work presents a general study on conformal antennas and their potential application on aircraft structures. Several electromagnetic simulations are performed in order to provide a comparative analysis of arbitrary conformal antennas with their planar counterparts and determine the advantages and disadvantages of each case. The worthiness of integrating these antennas on aircraft fuselages is investigated by simulating the antennas on an aircraft footprint. In addition, a new type of conformal antenna is introduced. Some attractive characteristics of this antenna are its nearly omnidirectional radiation patterns and its small physical size compared to other microstrip antennas of the same frequency range. A prototype of this new structure is designed for the Galileo frequency band E1 (1.559 - 1.591 GHz) and circular polarization in one hemisphere.