Helmet-mounted smart array antenna

With the advent of wireless telecommunications, efforts to develop personnel-carried personal communications equipment are being very vigorously pursued. For the personal antenna needed in this application, the area around the skull is a prime location and the future of a head-mount antenna has been envisioned. For firefighters, forest rangers, border patrols, and military personnel, the helmet provides a natural platform on which a head-mount antenna can be realized. However, the continually varying skeletal position associated with the movements of the individual, as well as propagation interference including multipath fading and man-made interference, makes it desirable to design a "smart" antenna with pattern-diversity to compensate for these problems. We present a preliminary design, with measured data, for a smart helmet-mounted antenna that has these performance features.