Electromagnetics and Antennas

Fractal Antennas

CRS has pioneered fractal antennas for large bandwidth multiband operation (Werner and Ganguly, IEEE Antennas and Propogation Magazine, February 2003). One such fractal antenna covering 1-10 GHz and for conformal monitoring in the aircraft wing is shown.

Features:

CRS has developed a novel conformal multiband antenna utilizing fractal geometries. Fractals have no characteristic sizes and are generally composed of many copies of seed element. This enables the antenna structure to have an infinite number of resonances and provides a means of realizing ultra-wideband antennas. Fractal antennas possess highly desirable attributes such as: (1) compact size, (2) low profile, (3) conformal, and (4) multiband or broadband. The antenna was shown to achieve a good input impedance matching and desirable hemispherical beam patterns throughout a 1-15 GHz range. The designed antenna is a microstrip patch-type antenna, which can be easily printed on a substrate material. A variety of combinations of operating frequencies and bandwidths are possible. CRS’s fractal antenna is best suited for conformal applications. The ground plane in the backside of the substrate offers great versatilities in applying it on various mounting platforms. CRS’s fractal antenna can be easily mounted on aircraft or spacecraft bodies. The footprint of the antenna is only 50mm (W) x 50mm (L) x 3.175mm (H). It can also be formed as an array configuration for SatCom applications. Other versions of fractal antennas for various applications are also available.