Wide-Angle Coverage Deployable Bunker Antenna for Ground Applications

Compact and lightweight antennas are required for future ground communication systems to provide wide-angle 4 pi steradians coverage for man-pack radio communication units carried by soldiers on the ground. Two innovative "Bunker" antennas at K-band are described in this article. The novelty includes antenna deployment from folded to unfolded configurations, compact size, low mass, 4 pi steradians coverage, low cost, wide bandwidth performance, and built-in radome for protection from severe environmental conditions. Design of these antennas, trades, RF simulations, mechanical design, antenna deployment, and material selection leading to product development are described for the first time in this article. A prototype antenna has been fabricated and measured results are presented. An excellent correlation between measured and simulated patterns has been achieved. The Bunker antenna has very wide frequency bandwidth of 86% covering Ku and Ka secondary frequency bands in addition to its primary K-band and thus could in the future replace three antennas on a dedicated man-pack with a single tri-band antenna solution.