Broadband Slotted Blade Dipole Antenna for Airborne UAV Applications

This paper presents a novel broadband dipole blade antenna for airborne unmanned aerial vehicle applications. Wideband performance and stable radiation pattern are achieved by the use of two perpendicular slots and two vertical tails. The vertical tails increase the excited surface current path and consequently increase the radiation efficiency of the antenna at lower frequencies. The feed line utilizes a matching circuit to achieve a wide impedance bandwidth, particularly at lower frequencies. The overall size of the antenna is 71\,\,\text {cm} \times 25\,\,\text {cm} \times 5 cm. A prototype of the proposed antenna has been fabricated and tested. Measurements agree well with simulation results. Based on measurement results, the antenna impedance bandwidth for VSWR