Analysis of loop antenna with ground plane for underwater communications

Abstract

Transmission and reception of high-speed short range signal is important for successful underwater water communications between an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) or Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs) and a docking station or underwater sensor nodes during a survey mission. The need for this form of application is currently receiving global attention from scientific groups and industries. Hence, underwater antennas are therefore required to provide these links and achieve good data rates and propagation distances for these applications either in fresh or sea water scenario.In this paper, the performance of loop antenna placed at a specified distance and parallel to the ground plane is assessed through simulation for usage in fresh water and operating in the High Frequency (HF) band. Three variations of this antenna namely; the circular loop, the square loop and the delta loop antennas has been placed on two different ground plane shapes (circular and square) for analyses of their performances. These antennas were designed in FEKO, an electromagnetic simulation software and their performance is assessed in terms of bandwidth and directivity. The results obtained shows that the antennas exhibit wideband and high directivity with square loop antenna placed on a square ground plane having slight advantages over the other antennas with respect to their bandwidth and directivity. Experimental results added for the same antenna, confirmed its performance in terms of the measured parameters are in good agreement with simulation results.

Performance analysis of patch antenna for underwater wireless communication in seawater

“…Thus, the value of attenuation constant, α is needed and expression (6) shows how to calculate the value. Hence, electric field degradation, LZ can be calculated by using (7), and z represents the travelled distance of the signal.…”

“…Furthermore, in [6] loop, dipole and J-pole antennas were used with sizes around 74.55 mm, 115.50 mm and 121.80 mm for 40 MHz, which had bandwidth performances of 13.94 MHz, 11.89 MHz and 10.43 MHz. While in [7], they used 3 types of loop antennas with ground plane for 40 to 100 MHz resonance, and the size were around 130 mm to 400 mm that gave directivity from 13 to 19 dB. In [8], a bow-tie antenna was used for dual band at 2.4 and 5.1 GHz with a size of around 11 mm to 12 mm, and the maximum gain achieved was 1.2 dBi at θ =0•, and a variable received power of -71 to -64 dBm.…”

Theoretical Concept for a Mobile Underwater Radio-Navigation System Using Pseudolite Buoys

“…Impedance matching is needed for electrically short antennas to be able to operate at 50 ohms and it can be achieved with the help of lump components. Many types of antennas for underwater applications are discussed in the literatures [22][23][24][25][26][27]. Most of them are wideband antennas for underwater communications in the MHz region; however, the basic principles of design and performance of these antennas apply also for lower frequencies in the kHz region [28].…”

Design of an axial mode helical antenna with buffer layer for underwater applications

“…For optical signal it normally requires line-of-sight between the transmitter and receiver that is hard to be achieved in water due to the higher  ISSN: 2088-8708 particle inside [6]. Meanwhile, RF technology which relied on the antenna seems more suitable to be considered for short distance transmission with moderate data rate [7]. Performance of conventional RF communication schemes in water is limited by the relatively small RF skin depth [8].…”