Compact, broadband, and thin corrugated U-shaped patch-constituted MIMO antennas for airborne UAV applications

Abstract

Abstract The major component for the effective functioning of airborne unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is an antenna. The unified integration of an antenna with UAVs without disturbing the other components of UAVs, compact size, thin, and wideband antennas are preferred. Based on these prerequisites, a low-profile and a wideband antenna is presented for autonomous UAVs for C-band applications. The antenna is designed on an extremely thin substrate of size 0.01λ0 without compromising the antenna's broad bandwidth. The antenna structure comprises a corrugated U-shaped patch, a few parasitic patches along with the partial ground. Initially, only a single mode was excited using a U-shaped patch, then further on introducing a few more parasitic patches along with corrugations in a U-shaped patch other modes were also coupled leading to enhancement in the bandwidth of the antenna. The proposed antenna along with a 2 × 2 quad-port multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) antenna is designed and fabricated. The measured results are found to be in good agreement with the simulated results. A broad bandwidth of 74.5% (4.1–9.0 GHz) with 5.02 dBi peak gain at 6.6 GHz is exhibited by the fabricated MIMO antenna. Thus, the designed antenna proves to be an effective candidate for UAV-based C-band applications.