Carbon fiber reinforced polymer as antenna ground plane material up to 10 GHz

Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) or generally Carbon Fiber Composites (CFC) are increasingly utilized in lightweight construction. Large CFRP parts such as chassis or fuselages are utilized as antenna ground planes. However, radiation characteristics of antennas designed for metal ground planes change when mounted on anisotropic composites. In this paper the influences of CFRP ground planes on the radiation characteristics of antennas in the range from 1-10 GHz are investigated with measurements of conical monopole antennas. Measurements show that ground planes from unidirectional CFRP severely distort radiation patterns, while the influence of woven plies is small.