Design and Evaluation of Circular Polarized Antennas for UAS Communication using C-V2X

Cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) is a technology originally developed for automotive applications. In recent years though, the C-V2X technology is considered also for Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) communication purposes. However, the UAS scenarios significantly differ from typical road user scenarios, e.g. the communication between different UASs should be established in arbitrary directions and for larger distances, frequently exceeding 1 km. To achieve this, special-purpose antennas are required. In this paper the deployment of circular polarized (CP) slotted patch antennas for direct UAS-toUAS communication is addressed. Within the context of the German national funded project VEREDUS, the C-V2X communication technology at 5.9 GHz is deployed in order to establish a robust communication link between two different pairs of UAS types. Simulation and measurement results of the antenna matching and radiation patterns of the designed CP antennas in the UAS compartments will be shown. Last but not least, first evaluation results from actual air field tests, which depict the omnidirectional coverage characteristic of the antennas in the drones will be also provided.