Overview of the DoD's rf multifunction structural aperture (MUSTRAP) program

Flexible Magnetic Polymer Composite Substrate with Ba1.5Sr1.5Z Hexaferrite Particles of VHF/Low UHF Patch Antennas for UAVs and Medical Implant Devices

“…Figure 6 shows a planar patch antenna whose performance depends on material properties of its substrate, as well as geometrical features including substrate thickness and patch size [1]. In general, development of skin antennas requires concurrent consideration of structural integration in addition to the antenna performance [10]. Antenna performance with the magnetodielectric composite substrates was investigated and compared with that of an antenna having a pure dielectric (PD) substrate with the same miniaturization factor, (µ r •ε r ) 1/2 , that is, (µ r •ε r ) MD = (ε r ) PD .…”

“…Considerable efforts have been devoted to the miniaturization of high frequency devices to satisfy demands for electronic packaging and integration [1][2][3][4][5]. The antenna integration into manned aerial vehicles conflicts with the aerodynamic efficiency of their structures, and interests in overcoming the confliction have recently increased by the advent of the so-called era of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. The communication and data link with the UAVs cover frequency bands from high frequency (HF) band to Ku band, 3 MHz-18 GHz [6].…”

“…In order to incorporate antennas into electronic devices with limited space, high dielectric and low loss materials have been used as antenna substrates [4,5]. This approach has been adopted in the development of conformal load-bearing antenna structure (CLAS) for aerial vehicles including UAVs, which use microwave frequency ranges including VHF and Ultra High Frequency (UHF) [10][11][12][13], as well 2 of 10 as implantable antennas for short-distance biotelemetry for the Medical Implant Communication Service (MICS) band, 402-405 MHz [14][15][16][17]. However, the use of dielectric-only substrates has drawbacks; field concentration around the high permittivity region leads to narrow bandwidth and low antenna efficiency, and low characteristic impedance, causing difficulties in impedance matching [1].…”

“…Another Z-type hexaferrite, Ba 1.5 Sr 1.5 Co 2 Fe 24 O 41 (Ba 1.5 Sr 1.5 Z) bulk ceramic material was developed by substituting Ba 2+ with Sr 2+ , and it was observed to have a higher magnetic resonance frequency and lower magnetic loss than Ba 3 Co 2 Fe 24 O 41 (Ba 3 Z) near 400 MHz frequency range [23]. However, the oxide structures are vulnerable to fracture under mechanical loading conditions, and thus flexible substrates can be preferable to the ferrimagnetic oxides for their application to the load bearing antennas [10][11][12][13] as well as RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) antennas [2,24,25].…”

Development of a smart-skin phased array system with a honeycomb sandwich microstrip antenna

“…3 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed. Since the early 1990s, much research has been performed on the embedding of antennas in load-bearing structural surfaces [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17].…”