Active composite dipole antenna for direction finding array antenna applications

A direction finding system is of great importance for a variety of applications such as electronic support (ES), electronic intelligence (ELINT), communications, and also personal locating service. For the ES, accurate direction finding (DF) detection is required for measuring and analyzing the physical parameters of the RF signals in the dense signal environment. The main element of the DF system is the antenna unit. It has to be carefully designed because the sensitivity of the DF system is dependent on the gain and the radiation patterns of the antenna and the characteristics of the antenna arrays. This paper presents the broadband active composite dipole antenna for applications requiring a low profile, lightweight and compact direction finding array. This antenna plays a role in two dipoles functionally and also one dipole physically to improve the gain in the V/UHF-band.