An Overview of Microwave UWB Antenna for Structural Health Monitoring of Wind Turbine Blades: Optimal Design and Analysis

Abstract

In this research paper, a multi-slot rectangular shape with a compact size of 18x10 mm microwave UWB antenna for structural health monitoring of wind turbine blades is presented. The objective of microwave UWB antenna to measure defects in the wind turbine blades. In this work reported an ideal outline of 9.2 to 21.4GHz with wider bandwidth of 12.2GHz is enveloping the upper band of microwave UWB frequency. The low cost RT/Duroid 5880 substrate material with dielectric constant of 0.0004 is assembled and tested. A comparative experimental method is carried out to execute the required resonance frequency by using high frequency structural 3D simulator (HFSS) tool. The proposed UWB antenna is simulated different feed position to acquire the required bandwidth and result shows that moderate peak gain and peak directivity of 3.79dBi and 3.63dBi. The dispersion characteristics is simulated and occurred throughout the upper band of UWB and show that omni-directional pattern also compared proposed antenna with existing antenna. This low profile nature and compact size microwave UWB antenna behavior is best suited for structural health monitoring of wind turbine blades and flexible for wind mill monitoring system.