Shunt-Excited Flat-Plate Antennas with Applications to Aircraft Structures

A shunt-excited flat-plate antenna is a structure comprised of a thin rectangular plate and a shunt-feeding circuit formed by a wire lying in the plane of the plate parallel and close to one of its long edges, the extremities of the wire being electrically bonded to the plate, and the wire broken at its center to provide driving terminals. In this paper, the electrical characteristics of this structure are examined experimentally and in terms of a simplified mechanism by means of which these characteristics can be predicted in a qualitative manner. The effect on these characteristics of the various important geometrical parameters is illustrated by measured data, and shown to conform to the predicted behavior. Two ways in which this structure may be used as the basis for low-drag antennas for high-speed aircraft are discussed in some detail.