Flexible And Improved Antennae For Drone Applications

A conformal antenna is a type of microstrip antenna designed to conform or follow some prescribed shape like a regular flat surface or an irregularly curved surface. The shape of the antenna can be a part of an aircraft, missile or a drone. It is possible to mount the antenna on a surface that curves such as cylindrical, spherical or other irregular shapes, unlike the standard flat patch antenna. In present drone communication, Circularly-polarized FPV (First Person View) antennas are being used for transmitting and receiving of data between the drone and the control unit. These FPV antennas are mostly operated at 5.8GHz frequency and a some FPV antennas are operated at 2.4GHz. However, these FPV antennas provide minimum return loss, maximum gain and maximum directivity, their major drawback is their shape. These antennas are mounted to the drones in such a way that these antennas are terrestrially protruded out of the surface. This results in higher aerodynamic drag on the antenna and also higher chance of antenna being getting damaged in case of unforeseen collisions. Therefore, there is a need of studying about other antennas that can be used as a replacement for the traditional FPV antennas. The new antenna should overcome the drawbacks of the existing FPV antennas without degrading the existing antenna performance metrics like gain, directivity etc., and all these can be achieved by using the conformal antennas. Conformal antennas are very thin and can be mounted on any irregularly curved surface. They can be developed at a wide range of frequencies with minimal return loss and high gain. The aerodynamic drag will be very less as these conformal antennas won’t pop out from the surface.