Analysis of Optimum Antenna Placement Considering Interference Between Airborne Antennas Mounted on UAV

In this paper, the optimum antenna placement is analyzed by considering the interference between airborne antennas mounted on the unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV). The analysis is implemented by selecting the antennas that the distance and operational frequency band between airborne antennas is close to each other among the omni-directional antennas. The analyzed antennas are the control datalink, TCAS(Traffic Collision & Avoidance System), IFF(Identification Friend or Foe), GPS(Global Positioning System), and RALT(Radar ALTimeter) antennas. There are three steps for the optimum antenna placement analysis. The first step is selecting the antenna position having the optimum properties by monitoring the variation of radiation pattern and return loss by the fuselage of UAV after selecting the initial antenna position considering the antenna use, type, and radiation pattern. The second one is analyzing the interference strength between airborne antennas considering the coupling between airborne antennas, spurious of transmitting antenna, and minimum receiving level of receiving antenna. In case of generating the interference, the antenna position without interference is selected by analyzing the minimum separation distance without interference. The last one is confirming the measure to reject the frequency interference by the frequency separation analysis between airborne antennas in case that the intereference is not rejected by the additional distance separation between airborne antennas. This analysis procedure can be efficiently used to select the optimum antenna placement without interference by predicting the interference between airborne antennas in the development stage.