Everyone here is familiar with traditional antennas, time-honored favorites like dipoles and solid parabolic reflectors. But occasionally, circumstances call for something peculiar. This paper will describe a number of unusual antennas for particular communications scenarios that have been developed at the NASA Glenn Research over the past decade or so. The list includes: a K-band scanning ferroelectric reflectarray; a UHF “Vivaldi” for cellular connectivity to unmanned aerial vehicles; a Ku-band array that develops a top-hat pattern to feed a zone plate antenna; an active antenna that toggles between Iridium and GPS bands; a VHF hybrid spiral/dipole for orientation determination on Venus; and a Ku-band deployable reflector that strongly resembles a giant beach ball. Design strategy and performance results will be included, and trends towards cognitive antennas will be discussed.
BT - HamSCI Workshop 2019 C1 -20190322_1610-1610-Bob_Romanofsky_KE8ERX.pdf
CY - Cleveland, OH DA - 03/2019 LA - eng N2 -Everyone here is familiar with traditional antennas, time-honored favorites like dipoles and solid parabolic reflectors. But occasionally, circumstances call for something peculiar. This paper will describe a number of unusual antennas for particular communications scenarios that have been developed at the NASA Glenn Research over the past decade or so. The list includes: a K-band scanning ferroelectric reflectarray; a UHF “Vivaldi” for cellular connectivity to unmanned aerial vehicles; a Ku-band array that develops a top-hat pattern to feed a zone plate antenna; an active antenna that toggles between Iridium and GPS bands; a VHF hybrid spiral/dipole for orientation determination on Venus; and a Ku-band deployable reflector that strongly resembles a giant beach ball. Design strategy and performance results will be included, and trends towards cognitive antennas will be discussed.
PB - HamSCI PP - Cleveland, OH PY - 2019 T2 - HamSCI Workshop 2019 TI - Crazy Antennas ER -