Low-cost high performance antenna system for UAV-ground communication

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Low-cost and light-weight UAV systems have become an attractive solution for newsgathering, environmental monitoring, extending communication services to remote areas, and even package delivery, among numerous other emerging applications. The proper operation of a UAV depends on a highly reliable radio link between the UAV and ground control. This link, in addition to sending continuous data, also serves as a life line to UAV. Considering highly limited power source available on UAV and small weight UAV can carry, the performance, carefully crafted radiation pattern, and radiation efficiency of the antennas on UAV and the ground station, have a huge impact on the range and the quality of the radio transmission between the UAV and ground. The proposed project will provide a comprehensive analysis of the radio link between a a ground station and a flying UAV transceiver. Based on this research, an optimal low-cost antenna system that satisfy operation needs of SOC UAV project will be investigated, designed, and optimized. A major focus in this research to explore the reconfigurable antenna structures, which are extremely lightweight and which can maximize radiation beam towards Ground Controller Station (GCS) with a low-cost/complexity beam control network and sufficient bandwidth for high quality video transmission. Existing low-cost small UAV's do not have antenna beam adaptability due to cost and complexity of the conventional beam-forming architectures. Extremely low-power consumption and simple beam-switching/reconfigurable antenna architecture investigated and developed in this research will open the way for applying low-cost beam-scanning technology to other mass market applications where low-cost/complexity and low-power consumption are essential.