Design of a Magnetic Communication System Based on a Series Magnetoelectric Array Antenna

Magnetoelectric (ME) antennas, driven by acoustic excitation, offer superior energy conversion efficiency, smaller size, and lighter weight than traditional very-low-frequency (VLF) antennas, making them particularly suitable for portable cross-medium communication systems. This paper presents a VLF communication system based on a ME array antenna. The core materials of the antenna array are ME laminated composites consisting of surface-modified FeSiB metallic glassy ribbons and commercial PbZrO3-PbTiO3 (PZT) ceramics plates. The radia-tion intensity is enhanced by connecting seven ME antenna units in series to form a transmitting array. Experimental results show that the ME antenna array generates a magnetic signal of 165 nT at 1 m for root-mean-square (RMS) values. Furthermore, when the RMS driving voltage for the ME array antenna is 17.1 V, the power consumption is 0.14 W. By employing a Differential Phase-Shift-Keying (DPSK) modulation, our proposed magnetic com-munication system achieves a wireless communication distance over 11.4 m with a bit rate of 50 bps in complex environments, exhibiting exceptional anti-interference and stability.