Antenna array system for RT-1944/U radio communication

This paper presents the design of a compact uniform circular antenna array system used in conjunction with the RT-1944/U radio and reports the obtained experimental results. The proposed system was primarily designed to increase the communications range between Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) sea frames and Mission Package Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) by developing a modular aerostat communications relay system for the 5.8 GHz WIMAX or WiFi radios that is semi-autonomously deployed and retrieved from the LCS and Unmanned Influence Sweep System USV. Given the sensitive nature of the application for which the system was designed, additional functionalities were added in order to render the system robust. The latter was achieved by enabling the system to operate with a variety of state of the art communication techniques. The proposed system is able to transmit and receive with beamforming capabilities, spatially and spectrally map and resolve emitters (friendly and foe), and operate within a larger spatial range in a line of sight (LOS) environment.