Antennas for the Long Distance Communication System for Unmanned Air Vehicle
UAV, Antennas, BVLOS,, S-Band, VHF.
Brazilian Space Launch Centers employ conventional aircraft to monitor large maritime areas destined to the impact point of rockets or parts of them, and this has a high cost. The remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) have shown to be a low cost solution for operations
of this type, however, the short range of their conventional remote controls is a limiting factor for their employment in large distances.
This paper proposes high-performance antennas for remotely piloted aircrafts (RPA) communication system, aiming control and image transmission from RPA operating at long distances. It was considered the case-study of the Brazilian Space Launch Centers,
which plan to employ RPA in order to assist the surveillance of the restricted area for rocket impact. The proposed antennas were designed in order to maximize gain and lobe aperture for the ground station operation; whereas, for RPA operation, the antennas were tailored in order to provide optimal gain and omnidirectional transmission, even during RPA maneuvers, as well as to minimize weight, size and aerodynamic drag in the aircraft. It is minutely described the design and evaluation of the proposed antennas, by means of simulations and experimental verification. The radio link using the proposed antennas was evaluated in laboratory and verified able to perform data transmission at emulated distance of 110 km (59.4 NM)(68.35 M).