Aerospace

The limited space and environmental conditions of air and space borne antennas require special antenna designs and deployment in terms of construction, interference and integrated radiation pattern. The aerospace industry has been one of the main driving forces behind measurement ranges and simulations to characterise antennas integrated on platforms. Typical issues of concern are:

• Design of space and aircraft antennas
  
• Radiation pattern analysis of communication antennas on platforms (V/UHF, IFF, Inmarsat)
  
• Pattern distortion of high gain/high frequency antennas due to shielding by adjacent structures
  
• EMC (Antenna coupling, shielding, cable coupling)
• Radar Cross Section (RCS)
  

Iridium satellite surface currents due to main mission antenna.	Galileo satellite model.

FEKO is widely used in the aerospace industry. It can be used to analyse antennas and antenna placement problems, e.g.

• Wire and "blade" antennas in isolation or mounted on vehicles
  
• Complex smaller antennas (e.g. cavity backed spiral, conformal antennas and antennas containing dielectrics)
• Antenna Arrays (dipole or planar microstrip antennas.)
• Reflector antennas
• Radomes

Electrical size considerations for antenna placement analysis:

• Medium sized (e.g. V/UHF communication antennas) problems are solved using the MoM
  
• Large (e.g. 1-3 GHz antennas on a platform) problems are typically solved using the MLFMM.
  
• Huge (X-band and higher) problems require either the MoM/UTD (where platform can be represented by flat polygonal plates) or MoM/PO or MoM/GO

Modelling a typical blade antenna.	Radiation pattern of antenna mounted on Airbus.	RCS of F5 aircraft.
Triangular patch antenna mounted on F5 aircraft, 4.3 GHz, full-wave solution.