Slotted coaxial antennas have many advantages over traditional broadband panel antennas including much smaller size and wind load, higher reliability and a greater degree of azimuth and elevation pattern flexibility but suffer from narrow bandwidth. In the past decade, techniques have been applied to increase the bandwidth, but have been limited to side mounted antenna configurations in the UHF range.
High power top mounted slotted coaxial broadcast antennas can be used for broadband multi-channel applications. The top mounted configurations feature lower cost, lower wind load, and high reliability as compared to panel antennas, for instance. This may be done by applying phase cancelation through multiple feeds. The effect external transmission lines, used for the multiple feeds, has on the circularity of the azimuth pattern can be greatly minimized through the use of parasitic tubes near the surface of the aperture.
This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to limitations that solve any or all disadvantages noted in any part of this disclosure.
A more detailed understanding may be had from the following description, given by way of example in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. Note that the figures are not to scale.
Slotted coaxial antennas have many advantages over traditional broadband panel antennas including much smaller size and wind load, higher reliability and a greater degree of azimuth and elevation pattern flexibility. The one disadvantage of slotted coaxial antennas has been their inherently narrow bandwidth. In most applications their usage is only considered for single channel operation, approximately 1% bandwidth for UHF.
In the past decade, techniques have been applied to increase the bandwidth, but have been limited to side mounted antenna configurations. Top mounted dual channel operation has historically been accomplished by structurally stacking two single channel antennas on top of each other. A disadvantage of this technique could be the effect of the top antenna’s feedline has on the circularity of the bottom antenna since it must run through the bottom antenna’s aperture.
This disclosure describes phasing and transmission line arranges for broadband slotted coaxial antennas which may be implemented as pylon antennas in single, free standing, top mount configurations which do not suffer the extra wind load associated with the use of two antennas. In some configurations, the use of dummy transmission lines allows the designs to not sacrifice azimuth pattern circularly due to external feedlines.
In the communication industry, what is acceptable VSWR varies widely depending on the application. In some cases, such as broadcast, the VSWR must be close to unity where in other cases it can be as high as 10:1. The frequency bandwidth can be expressed as the ratio of the band of operation to the center frequency as a percent:
The natural bandwidth of a coaxial slot radiator is typically on the order of one to two percent depending on the maximum allowable VSWR within the operating bandwidth.
See John L. Schadler, “Broadband Slotted Coaxial Broadcast Antenna Technology.” White Paper, www.dielectric.com, 2014.
Feeding broadband panel antennas by a corporate feed network is common practice. It provides a stable elevation pattern frequency response and can provide a level of impedance cancellation if phased correctly. The feed system makes use of the fact that multiple voltage reflections from similar unmatched loads can be made to arrive at a common point in the system, in the proper phase relation, causing a net cancellation to occur. The most cost effective, reliable, and lowest wind load method to feed slotted coaxial antennas is to have a single input feeding multiple slots in parallel. This design eliminates feed lines, power dividers and connections, but does not provide broadband performance. To take advantage of phase cancellation to extend the impedance bandwidth, the slotted coaxial antenna must be broken down into multiple sections as shown in
In the example of
To analyze the bandwidth improvement associated with using phase cancellation between antenna sections, an arbitrary number of loads are connected in parallel as shown in
For the case where ΓIN=0, full cancelation of all the loads, the phase offset between the loads must be of the solution Equation 3.
Aperture efficiency is the figure of merit which defines how effectively the physical area of the antenna is utilized. The gain for which an antenna can provide is given by Equation 4.
See Warren L. Stutzman, Gary A Thiele, “Antenna Theory and Design” John Wiley & Sons, 1981. In Equation 4, η is the aperture efficiency and A is the area the antenna consumes. Large phase spreads reduce the antennas gain and thus the aperture efficiency, so it is not always possible to achieve full cancellation in practical multi-sectional antenna designs. In general, the greater number of sections or load splits, the more efficient the aperture becomes. It is also true that in general, greater number of load splits provide larger operating bandwidth. This is due to reducing the progressive phase runout across the band from loads placed in series as well as reducing load impedance randomness sensitivity. For example, a 20-layer slotted coaxial antenna can provide a maximum rms gain of 24.27. If split into two sections and fed with the optimum phase offset of 90 degrees between sections, the aperture efficiency is reduced to 85%. If partial cancellation is sufficient to achieve the bandwidth requirements, then this can be improved. If that same antenna is split into four sections with an optimum phase offset of 45 degrees, the aperture efficiency is now 95%.
Desired null fill and beam tilt also dictate how practical aperture illuminations are applied to multi-sectional slotted coaxial antennas. Large phase spread can cause unwanted excessive beam tilt and low aperture efficiency. It is always a trade-off of trying to provide optimum phase offset while maintaining a desired beam tilt, null fill, and gain. The following example illustrates how a 32-layer slotted coaxial UHF broadcast antenna can be optimized for coverage performance and efficiency while adding phase offset to increase the operating bandwidth for multichannel use. The 32-layers are broken into 4 sets of 8 layers and phased in two levels as shown in
The two-level phase offsets used in this example maintain an aperture efficiency over 90%. To determine the maximum increase in bandwidth that can be realized from the phase cancelation scheme, equations 2 and 3 are used along with the appropriate phase runout vs. frequency. A typical slotted coaxial antenna impedance is shown in
The impedance at points B in
The calculated effect of the impedance summation given the 35 degree offset results in a bandwidth increased to 2.6% for the same allowable VSWR of 1.15:1. Although far from optimal (90 degree offset), this first level of cancellation begins to shrink the impedance spread. Level 2 of cancellation in the example provides 85 degrees of offset. The calculated resulting impedance at point C in
As can be seen, since the 85 degrees of offset is nearly optimal (90 degrees for two loads as given by equation 3) the usable bandwidth for an allowable VSWR of 1.15:1 has increase to 7.2% for the entire antenna array.
It must be noted that the above example provides a theoretical maximum bandwidth. It has assumed that the impedances at points A are all identical. This of course is not realistic since no material or manufacturing tolerances have been accounted for and the power splitting points are assumed to have no impedance contribution. Top mounted pylon broadcast antennas are constructed from steel pipe which is at the mercy of steel tolerancing. Standard industry steel pipe which doubles as the outer conductor as well as structural backbone, typically has a tolerance of 12% for the wall thickness. Depending on pipe size, a 12% variation on the outer conductor of a coaxial line will create a compounding 1.05:1 to 1.2:1 VSWR offset at each layer in the antenna. Therefore, the impedances at points C in the example will not be the same and the actual product bandwidth will be reduced from the theoretical maximum.
An experimental antenna using the 32-layer design phasing configuration illustrated in
In
Transmission line feed 922 for bottom section 920 and feed 912 for top section 910 run up the tower 902. Transmission line 912 further runs the length of both sections 920 and 910 to enter the top of section 910, while line 922 enters the bottom of section 920.
As implemented in the Omaha experiment, each of upper section 910 and lower antenna section 920 have two sets of slots, which are fed at different phases relative to the feed lines 912 and 922, respectively. The resulting phasing is 0° for eight layers at the bottom of section 920, 35° for eight layers at the top of section 920, 85° for eight layers at the bottom of section 910, and 120° for eight layers at the top of section 910.
Several arrangements for the triaxial center feed mechanism, not shown, are available in practice which do not affecting the slotted coaxial performance of the radiator layers 934 and slotted layers 932 of each subsection of the antenna.
The Omaha antenna of
An alternative to the triaxial feeding of the top section of a two-section slotted coaxial antenna is shown in
If the antenna is circularity or elliptically polarized, the vertical components circularity is typically worse because the transmission line is placed in the vertical plane. A typical set of elliptically polarized omni / omni stacked antenna patterns at UHF usually look similar to
Another disadvantage of the stack configuration is the extra weight and wind load of the second antenna. The development of a new approach has led to improving the circularity of an omni-UHF slotted coaxial when transmission lines are placed in its aperture. This is especially true for the vertical polarization. This is accomplished by placing four symmetrical cylindrical lines around the aperture instead of one. The new approach also accommodates more than one channel thus not needing the second antenna of a stack. This technique was used in Omaha Nebraska and utilized the antenna design described in the previous section. Since only a single feed was necessary to run through the aperture to the upper feed point, three “dummy” parasitic lines are used in conjunction to the live line.
In the previous design scheme, only one of the four lines running through the aperture serves a feed purpose. If the other three were used as transmission lines instead of dummy parasitic lines, then more feed point could be added to the array. As previously discussed, if more feed points are added, then the operating bandwidth can be increased using phase cancellation. In a 32-layer design similar to the Omaha design, each of the four lines can be used to center feed four sections of 8 layers. This doubles the number of load sections shown in
Please note that the dotted and dashed lines used in
To analyze the maximum increase in expected bandwidth the quad-feed phase cancellation design can provide, we again can use the typical slotted coaxial antenna impedance shown in
In
As described in connection with
To achieve better radiation patterns, the effects of the vertical feeds are balanced by providing dummy feed sections extending the full length of the pylon antenna 1700. In the example of
Each stage of
This technique of balancing plural outer feeds with dummy feed sections may be applied in any number of ways. For example, any number of vertical feeds and stages may be used. Each stage may be bottom fed, center fed, or top fed. Each stage may or may not take advantage of triaxial feed distribution. Different stages on the same antenna may take advantage of different feed arrangements. Similarly, different stages and different portions of stages may use different numbers, sizes, or placements of slots.
The usable bandwidth for an allowable VSWR of 1.15:1 has increase to 11.8% for the entire antenna array. This is substantially higher than the dual triax design discussed earlier. If the 75% rule of thumb is applied to the quad tee design, the overall expected operating bandwidth is 8.9% which can effectively cover eight UHF channels.
This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 63,341,076, filed May 12, 2022, entitled “Broadband High-Power Pylon Antenna,” the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
Number | Date | Country | |
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63341076 | May 2022 | US |