Multifold Bandwidth Improvement in Conformal Patch Antenna for Aircraft Application Using Corrugated Edge Coupling

Abstract

In the high-speed Internet of Things (IOT) era, the aircraft on-board is one of the few places that lacks high speed network access. The speed of this communication link between the ground station and the aircraft is limited by the transmitting antenna power, cost, latency and available infrastructure. The Direct Air to Ground (DATG) is a much-guaranteed technique which can provide a high-speed link between the ground station and aircraft. This paper describes a novel conformal microstrip patch antenna design which provides fourfold increase in bandwidth. As the bandwidth of an antenna mounted on the fuselage of aircraft is crucial to achieve higher data rate, this antenna performance is promising and suits better for DATG application. The proposed antenna with a size of (6.81 X 7.21cm) achieves a bandwidth of ~700MHz (5.032GHz to 5.73GHz) and max Gain of 9.53dB with max radiation efficiency of 93%. As this antenna is to be mounted on the aircraft fuselage, a substrate material, RT duroid 5880 with a thickness of 0.787mm is selected to have better conformability, low loss and high gain. This paper explains the different performance metrics involved in the DATG system and derives the specification for the proposed antenna structure. Also, the detailed structural analysis with the support of parametric and Characteristic Mode Analysis (CMA) is provided to get the physical insight of the designed antenna.