Installed Performance Assessment of Blade Antenna by means of the Infinitesimal Dipole Model

This paper presents an accurate and simple model to predict the radiation pattern of a blade antenna installed on an aircraft. Based on the far field radiation pattern of the blade antenna on a ground plane, an equivalent infinitesimal dipole model (IDM) is built. Taking into consideration the basic geometry and some physical characteristics of the antenna to be modeled, the proposed approach has overcome one of the major problems of the classic IDM by reducing the number of parameters to be optimized. In order to validate its application in electromagnetic large structures problems, an aircraft is chosen as a case study. Good agreement with the radiation patterns is obtained between the proposed model and a blade antenna, where its accuracy and reduction in computational cost is verified.