Conformal Appliqué Antennas for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Aircraft

This is an SBIR Phase-I proposal, under SOCOM Topic 06-002, “Conformal Appliqué Antennas for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Aircraft.” A definite need exists to develop a family of appliqué antennas to be conformally mounted on various UAVs and manned aircraft for broadcast of PSYOPS messages at frequencies throughout the FM (87.5-108 MHz) and TV (174-230 MHz and 470-806 MHz) bands. To develop antennas to cover each band individually is not too difficult technically, but would lead to an operational nightmare since many antennas are needed to cover all the bands. On the other hand, to reduce the family of antennas to a single aperture is technically very difficult. Wang Electro-Opto (WEO) has unique, enabling, and well-established broadband conformable antenna technologies, and proposes to develop a single-aperture antenna system that can operate in all FM and TV bands. The proposed antenna can be conformally mounted on a platform with a mounting surface area of about 3 ft. x 3 ft. It is capable of good polarization match with all ground receive antennas, not possible by other approaches. The proposed single-aperture approach is practical, efficient, convenient, and cost-effective, which would not be possible by approaches using a family of antennas.