Development of VHF-Band Conformal Antenna for UAV Mounting

In this paper, a VHF band conformal antenna for UAV mounting was developed. The proposed antenna was designed as an shape-adaptive structure by minimizing the antenna height to be advantageous in RCS reduction performance. As for the antenna radiator, the outer radiator was arranged around the inner radiator to apply the CRLH zeroth-order resonance structure. With this structure, the height of the antenna was minimized, and it was reduced by about 70 % compared to the existing blade antenna. In addition, for impedance matching, the intermediate frequency bandwidth of the VHF band was improved through the sleeve pin of the inner radiator, and the low frequency bandwidth of the VHF band was improved by applying an EMI shielding gasket to the shorting pin of the outer radiator. The proposed antenna was manufactured and measured to verify the performance of the device and the performance after UAV mounting. As a result, the standard was satisfied for the operating frequency.