Fully Collapsible Lightweight Dipole Antennas

Abstract

Flexible, deployable phased arrays enable novel and diverse applications but necessitate similarly flexible radiators. Here we present a light and flexible 10GHz dipole antenna, which is co-cured to a glass-fiber composite and suited for flexible phased arrays. The antennas are designed to dynamically conform to new array shapes and be flexible enough to fold completely flat and pop back up upon deployment. We employ a pop-up dipole with a capacitive fingers feed for impedance matching that is highly robust against manufacturing errors. Upon deployment, the antennas exhibit a −10 dB-bandwidth >1.5 GHz and >110° half-power beam width single lobe pattern suitable for beamforming.