A Quad-Polarization Reconfigurable Conformal Array of Wide Coverage Range and High Gain for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communications

作者：Wenfei Tang, Xiang Gao, Chuanfei Ding, Chao Zhu, Ruide Li, Buning Tian, Xiangyuan Bu, Jianping An · 发表于：IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1109/tap.2024.3371680 · 被引用次数：29 · 研究领域：UAV Applications and Optimization、Antenna Design and Analysis、Millimeter-Wave Propagation and Modeling

This communication presents a quad-polarization reconfigurable multifaceted conformal array of wide coverage range and high gain that is suitable for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication applications. The design features a sparse array layout comprised of three conformal subarrays, where each subarray includes nine quad-polarization reconfigurable radiating elements. The radiating element is a single-port excited patch radiator loaded by edge slots for size miniaturization and central shorting pin for biasing simplification, which is integrated with a low-complicity reconfigurable feeding network consisting of relatively few PIN-diodes and biasing lines. Using such a miniaturized and high-efficiency element, a polarization reconfigurable conformal array prototype is designed, fabricated, and experimentally characterized. Simulation and measurement results have shown that the presented conformal array exhibits a 3 dB axial-ratio (AR) bandwidth of up to 1.3% at around 1.5 GHz and −10 dB impedance bandwidth of 7.7% for two circular-polarization modes and 7.3% for two linear-polarization modes, respectively. Besides, the realized gain is over 14 dBi for all reconfigurable polarization modes over a relatively wide beam coverage range of 50° × 180°.