Transparent and conformal wheel-shaped fractal antenna for vehicular communication applications

In this article, a low cost, compact conformal antenna is proposed for vehicular communications applications. The concept of fractal geometry is applied in this design to make the model more attractive in its appearance as well as to attain desired bands in the vehicular communication spectrum. It is fabricated on a transparent and flexible poly vinyl chloride material of size 55 mm x 40 mm x 3 mm. The proposed antenna is intended to operate in GSM-1800/1900, Digital Communication System (DCS-1800), Personal Communication Service (PCS-1900), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), Long-Term Evolution (LTE2600), Industrial, Scientific, and Medical radio band (ISM 2.4G), Wireless local area network (WLAN), Bluetooth, World Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), IEEE802.11p protocol based Vehicle-to-everything, Dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) and Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) communications bands. The prototype of the antenna in its planar and conformal versions exhibit the wideband characteristics and their measured results show good agreement with that of obtained simulation results. The virtual analysis of platform mounted characteristics of the proposed antenna at two different locations of the vehicle (vehicle roof-top and on side-view mirror) are performed in ANSYS Savant simulation tool and the corresponding far-field radiation performance is characterized.