Abstract
In this paper, a compact antenna assembly for an amplitude comparison direction-finding(DF) method for a small flight vehicle is presented. Designed antenna assembly consists of four antennas and it is mounted on a radius of 1.45 λc where λc corresponds to the wavelength of the center frequency. To achieve compactness and robustness of the assembly, the elements are fed by end-launch feeding method and have modified aperture shapes of E- or H-sectoral horns. The feeding part consists of SMA connector, stepped impedance matching structure, and square waveguide of 0.6 λc × 0.6 λc. To achieve different main beam directions for every antenna which is required condition for amplitude comparison DF method, all apertures of the antennas are inclined and it makes the main beam direction of each antenna to top, bottom, left, and right with respect to the axis of the platform. To verify the validation of DF performance of the presented antenna assembly, amplitude comparison curves using measurement results are presented. The bandwidth of the antennas are above 3.2 % in Ku-band(VSWR ≤ 2:1).