A Wideband High-Gain Antenna for Low-Altitude UAV Airspace Control

Abstract

This paper proposes a portable broadband high-gain antenna for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) low-altitude control, operating within the dedicated remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS) band (5.03–5.91 GHz). The total size of the antenna is 240×240×187 mm³. It uses a printed log-periodic dipole antenna (PLPDA) as feed, and a four-layer frequency selective surface (FSS) cascaded as radome to enhance gain. Experimental results demonstrate that the antenna gain ranges from 10.1 to 15.9 dB and the half-power beam width (HPBW, 2θ_0.5) <23°within the operation band. Compared to existing portable UAV low-altitude control systems, the proposed antenna achieves an average gain enhancement of 4.7 dB.