VHF/UHF Open-Sleeve Dipole Antenna Array for Airborne Ice Sounding and Imaging Radar

This letter presents a simple, lightweight, and ultrawideband, the very high frequency/ultrahigh frequency (VHF/UHF) open-sleeve dipole antenna array for airborne ice measuring radar. The proposed antenna array achieves a wide bandwidth of 300 MHz via mutual coupling from neighboring excited elements. A hollow aluminum tube is used for both dipole and parasitic elements to minimize the antenna's weight. The simulation results show that to achieve a bandwidth of 300 MHz with a peak realized gain up to 12 dBi in the frequency range from 170 to 470 MHz, the length of the dipole (L
_dip
) and parasitic elements (L
_para
) of elements 1 and 4 of the four-element antenna array need to be 670 mm and 200 mm, respectively. At the same time, elements 2 and 3 require an L
_dip
of 640 mm and L
_para
of 180 mm. Based on these dimensions, a four-element antenna array is fabricated and tested. The measured antenna performance results show a good agreement with the simulated results.