SBIR-STTR Award

This proposed program will determine the feasibility of both tunable and non-tunable approaches of developing a very low profile, very wide bandwidth antenna for aircraft communications. Both approaches exploit an innovative technique to design ultra-thin antenna structures using artificial magnetic conductors (AMC), and also to minimize the surface area thus allowing antenna miniaturization using our proprietary ultra-wideband antenna technologies and patented genetic algorithms. The former approach will solve the wide bandwidth by frequency tuning, whereas the latter approach will break the bandwidth-limited, conventional, periodicity of unit cells of AMCs to achieve extremely wide bandwidth that is so important for flight platforms. The overall objective is to design and develop such an antenna to resolve also other challenging antenna issues that have been persisting for a long time, notably in the last decade with military and commercial flight platforms. These issues are for the antenna to occupy the smallest practical surface area at the lowest practical weight, without significantly impacting aircraft aerodynamics.

Keywords:
Ultra-Wideband, Antenna, Amc, Meta-Material, Artificial Magnetic Conductor, High Impedance Surface, Optimization, Aperiodic

This Phase II program will continue to develop the application of our compact AMC (Artificial Magnetic Conductor) with aperiodic cells for creating very low-profile, very wideband antennas for aircraft communications. The results of our Phase I effort support compact AMC antenna designs for broadside linearly polarized coverage. By adopting circularly polarized antennas with proper aperiodic AMC cell matching, we will create antenna structures suitable for Navair’s SATCOM and other broadside-radiation applications. Furthermore, we will apply our aperiodic approach to create very low-profile, wideband linearly-polarized antennas for end-fire omni-directional coverage toward the horizon. The ultimate goal is to design and develop such an antenna to satisfy the long-standing need for low-profile broadband omnidirectional antennas for military and commercial aircraft. These designs will also endeavor occupy the smallest practical surface area at the lowest practical weight, without significantly impacting aircraft aerodynamics.

Keywords:
METAMATERIAL, METAMATERIAL, ARTIFICIAL MAGNETIC CONDUCTOR, COMPACT CELL, LOW-PROFILE, ULTRA-WIDEBAND, HIGH IMPEDANCE SURFACE, APERIODIC