Drone Airframe Acting as a Magnetic Loop Antenna

Abstract

This paper elaborates on the use of magnetic loop antenna employed in long range over the horizon radio communications on board of small to medium sized drones. The radio band of interest is the shortwave band (SW) also known as high frequency band (HF). Due to the well-known fact that standing wave antennas have sizes comparable to the wavelength of the radio signal, the installation of such antennas on board of small or medium sized drones is not feasible. To overcome this obstacle and enable a small drone to be used for radio communications in the HF band, we resort to electrically short antennas. A suitable option is the magnetic loop antenna. Although geometrically small, it is sized in meters when applied to shortwaves and becomes well suited to the dimensions of small to medium sized multicopters. The current report offers a solution that accommodates a magnetic loop antenna within the fuselage of small to medium sized multicopters. The project is being developed by a team at the Space Research and Technology Institute, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. We have already obtained two patent registrations in the field.