A miniaturized airplane blade antenna for radio navigation and communication systems

Blade antennas are preferred antenna structures for airborne applications due to their compact size, lightweight and drag-reducing aerodynamic shape. In this paper, we present the design, simulation and realization of a miniaturized blade antenna requiring a small ground plane and covering the frequency band 0.8–1.1 GHz. To reduce air drag, the proposed antenna is placed inside an aerodynamically optimized airborne radome. The return loss, the radiation patterns and the realized gain of the proposed antenna are studied using HFSS simulations. The comparison of the simulated return loss and radiation patterns to their measured counterpart demonstrates a good agreement. A minimum realized gain of 3.6 dB was achieved at the frequency of 0.9 GHz.