Research Projects

The circularly polarized (CP) antennas with stable broad-beam broadside radiation are necessary for navigational aids and unmanned arial vehicles (UAVs). The CP antenna is significantly advantageous for navigation systems and UAVs because CP antenna allows transmission and reception of signal from linearly/circularly polarized antennas irrespective of relative orientation between transmitter and receiver antennas, improves multipath rejection and reduces Faraday rotation. However, design and development of CP antenna with stable broad-beam broadside radiation, phase centre and reduced multipath fading over multiple or broadband is still a challenging task. The turnstile antenna with choke ring is available in market but it is non-planar, larger in size and limited to L-band. Thus, the proposed research project aims to design, analysis and experimental verification of metasurface-based CP antenna. The metasurface as artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) is excellent to improve antenna gain and reduce surface wave hence reduced multipath fading. In addition, AMC reduces antenna profile and miniaturize antenna footprint when integrated with planar crossed-dipole antenna. The crossed-dipole antenna with modified arms and excited with balun enhance circular polarization, operating frequency range, and stable phase centre. Therefore, metasurface-based crossed-dipole antenna operating over L1, L2, L5 is suitable for IRNSS. Subsequently, the similar antenna with 5G connectivity is suitable for UAVs so that it can communicate with other systems in intelligent transport system (ITS). Further, study on real-time reception and propagation loss of the proposed antenna configurations will be carried out in this project.