Dual Antenna Design for a Novel Airborne Probe

Abstract

This work outlines the design, simulation, and testing of a dual antenna design for a novel airborne probe. The airborne probe is known as the Global Sense eMote and is designed to collect in-situ atmospheric data and transmit the data back to a receiver base station. The eMote operates in the industrial, scientific, and medical band, 902 – 928 MHz. The eMote is designed to replace the larger, more costly current environmental data collection devices currently on the market. The final antennas designed were two planar inverted-F antennas on a compact, circular FR-4 printed circuit board. This work outlines the methodologies used to select and design the antennas. The antennas were simulated and designed in ANSYS HFSS and ANSYS Electronics Desktop. The fabricated antennas were then tested to determine how well their performance correlated with the simulated antennas. The antennas did not perform as well as the simulation implied so the causes were determined and the process to extract the differences was detailed. Finally, potential antenna improvements and future work are presented.