Performance assessment of antenna array for an unmanned air vehicle

Abstract

In this paper, the performance of Linear Antenna Array Element (LAAE) has been evaluated at the Base Station (BS) with a different number of elements for Unmanned Air Vehicle UAV application. The Switched Beam (SB) and Phase Array (PA) have been used as a steering beam mechanism. The beam steering tracker is based on the GPS points of the UAV and the BS. In addition, the Misalignment angle has been analyzed for SB and PA corresponding to the maximum speed of the UAV. The compression between SB and PA in term of Bit Error Rate (BER) vs. Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and BER vs. Misalignment angle have been examined by using Matlab. The results show that the PA has better performance than SB in both terms under Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel with an interference signal. When the number of the elements is eight provides longer distance than four by the factor (1.5 in SB case and 2 in PA case) and wider Misalignment angle range than twelve by factor (2 in SW case and 3 in PA case). Therefore, it is becoming a useful option for many applications.