Articles

RSS

Introduction

Aircraft communications are becoming more and more complex, and an increasing number of antennas are being placed on military aircraft. As a result, there has been a rising interest in the interaction and co-siting of these antennas.

Airfield Technology, a company specializing in the design, manufacture, and integration of automatic flight inspection systems, recently faced the challenge of locating flight inspection system antennas on an unusual aircraft. Flight inspection systems place demanding requirements on aircraft antenna performance that can be difficult to meet, even with typical aircraft. Airfield Technology was to supply the Polish Air Force with a new flight inspection system for a Mielec M-28 aircraft, whose dual-vertical stabilizers presented an unusual configuration for a flight inspection aircraft. The effect of these stabilizers on antenna performance was unknown.

Faced with this challenge, Airfield Technology contacted Professor Kent Chamberlin of the University of New Hampshire, an expert on numerical electromagnetic methods and their applications in avionics and antenna systems performance. Professor Chamberlin referred Airfield Technology to Remcom Inc. and acted as a consultant on the study.

Remcom first imported a partial CAD (computer-aided design) file of the M-28 into XFDTD, the company's full-wave 3-D electromagnetic (EM) solver. The company then used XFDTD to revise the CAD file, adding missing parts and placing different antennas in various positions. XFDTD was then used to calculate the aircraft skin currents and 2-D and 3-D antenna patterns. The XFDTD results were used to determine the best antenna type/location combination that would satisfy the project's antenna coverage requirements. This article will discuss each of these steps in further detail, illustrated by corresponding screenshots from XFDTD.

Click Here To Download:
•Application Note: Positioning Antennas On Military Aircraft Using FDTD 3-D EM Analysis