Deployable Bunker Antenna with $4\pi$ Steradians Coverage for Ground Communications

Compact and light-weight antennas are required for future ground communication systems to provide wide angle
$4\pi$
steradians coverage for man-pack radio communications units carried by soldiers on the ground. Two novel “Bunker” antennas at K-band are described in this paper. The novelty includes antenna deployment from folded to unfolded configurations, compact size, light-weight, wide angular coverage, low-cost, wide bandwidth performance and built-in radomes for protection from stringent environmental conditions. Design of these antennas, trades, radio frequency (RF) simulations, mechanical designs, antenna deployments, and material selection leading to product development are described in this paper. A prototype antenna has been fabricated and measured results are presented. High correlation between measured and simulated patterns has been achieved. The Bunker antenna is very wideband covering Ku and Ka secondary bands, in addition to primary K-band frequencies, and thus could in the future replace three antennas on a man-pack radio with a single tri-band antenna.