Telemetry Antenna Patterns for Single and Multi-Element Arrays

Abstract

The use of multiple antennas (or multiport) antennas for vehicular telemetry causes patterns to result which are unknown and not well understood by the telemetry designer. When the antenna ports are separated by distances of more than a half wavelength, the resulting patterns are rarely what was intended. The antenna plotting program, an extension of a earlier University of Utah antenna plotting routine, allows rapid creation of patterns for up to 30 (or more) antennas of like polarization displaced from each other in all three axes. Single-port antennas are modeled as compound antennas to produce the observed pattern, and combinations of these single-port antennas are then plotted. Case studies are shown for an aircraft and a missile body.