Performance improvement of embedded planar fixed beam arrays in flying UAVs

The communication link of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) requires high bandwidth (for video streaming) and should support long ranges. Simple wire-like antennas usually cannot provide these requirements. In this work, we propose and demonstrate the effect of using fixed beam antenna arrays embedded in UAV wing structures for communication link range enhancement. A 12-element patch antenna array with a fixed beam direction controlled via an integrated feed network is designed, fabricated and embedded in the wing of a hobby type UAV. It operated in the 2.4 GHz band with at least 50 MHz operating bandwidth. The array size was 116 × 415 × 1.25 mm³ using a commercial FR-4 substrate, and designed using three layers. The received signal strength indicator (RSSI) levels using this array were almost 6 dB higher than their single wire counterpart, which extends its flying range in a line-of-sight flying scenario.