Joint Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Antenna Design for UAV-Enabled Communications

Wireless communications aided by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as a promising technology for serving numerous terminal devices of the Internet of Things. To support such a broad range of emerging applications, millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) is an effective solution because it has the characteristics of high transmission efficiency, wide frequency band, and very low latency. Meanwhile, a UAV-assisted communication system also requires a global positioning system reception (1.575 GHz) and ground control unit (2.4 GHz). This article investigates a highly integrated multiband antenna design to operate at the microwave and mm-Wave bands for robust and flexible UAV communications. Each antenna operating band utilizes the technology of a substrate-integrated waveguide cavity-backed antenna. By strategically engineering an mm-Wave antenna into a 2.4 GHz band antenna to share the aperture, besides showing high aperture reuse efficiency with a large frequency ratio, the proposed antenna has also maintained the geometrical advantages of compactness, planar configuration, and ease of integration with other circuits. Furthermore, the proposed antenna can provide flexible radiation patterns with upper/lower-space signal coverage according to the mission demands of the UAV. Experimental results of the prototype show that the antenna can fully cover the 1.575 GHz, 2.4 GHz, and fifth-generation mm-Wave bands of n257, n258, and n261. Multiple bands and stable radiation characteristics indicate the proposed antenna's suitability for deploying a UAV-supported wireless network.