Design of a Ceramic Patch Antenna for Artillery Projectile Positioning Applications

This paper presents a compact circularly-polarized patch antenna used for GPS/GLONASS receptions onboard an artillery projectile fuze. The proposed antenna consists of a corner-truncated slotted ceramic patch and a small circular ground plane. Two small rectangular slots are realized on the patch for improving the circular polarization bandwidth and an additional truncation at the patch’s supper left corner is employed for enhancing the required impedance bandwidth. The designed antenna inside the fuze occupies a cylindrical space of 6-㎜ height and 36-㎜ diameter. The optimal antenna design and the analysis of effects on design parameters are carried out with Microwave StudioTM by CST. The fabricated antenna is to be installed inside a fuze radome potted with plastic foam. The fabricated antenna shows a gain of 2.5~4.2㏈ic, an axial ratio of 5.1~11.6㏈, and a reflection coefficient of less than –10㏈ at 1.57~1.62㎓.