Miniaturized Annular Ring Slot Antenna for SmallMini strongUAVstrong.pdfVIP

Progress In Electromagnetics Research C, Vol. 54, 1–7, 2014 Miniaturized Annular Ring Slot Antenna for Small/Mini UAV Applications * Ling Sun , Bao-Hua Sun, Qiao Sun, and Wei Huang Abstract—A miniaturized annular ring slot antenna is presented. The antenna consists of an annular ring slot structure and a novel folded matching structure. The annular ring slot structure is printed on a substrate and shorted concentrically with a set of conductive vias. The additional matching structure is a ring cavity attached to the back of the annular ring slot structure. Firstly, the diameter of the proposed antenna is reduced by using the folded matching structure comparing with traditional annular ring slot antennas. Secondly, the impedance matching of the proposed antenna is achieved by optimizing the size of the matching structure. A prototype of the proposed antenna with a height of 3.048 mm (0.03λ) and a radius of 47.2 mm (0.4λ) is designed, fabricated and measured. The antenna resonates at 2.67 GHz and has a monopole-like radiation pattern, which shows that the antenna is suitable for the applications of taking off, landing, and long distance communications for a small or mini UAV. 1. INTRODUCTION Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) play an increasingly important role in military, civilian and scientific missions [1]. It is critical to have reliable communication link between ground control station and an aircraft because there is no pilot in the aircraft. As one of the most important parts of the communication system, a suitable antenna for UAV communications is of great significance. The antenna mounted on a UAV usually has a low profile to meet the aerodynamic requirements. In addition, other desirable features for th