Design and Performance Analysis of a Penta-band Spiral Antenna for Vehicular Communications

Developments in automotive industries are increasing to deliver secured and pleasant journey by exchange of information among the vehicles, inside vehicles, between vehicle and with infrastructure utilizing wireless communication networks (WCN). To meet the requirements for various wireless applications, a new printed planar based circularly polarized penta-band spiral antenna with tapered feed is designed to cover the navigational frequencies viz., 1.2, 1.5 GHz and WCN frequencies viz., 2.4, 3.3 GHz and Dedicated Short Range Communication frequency 5.8 GHz for vehicular mobile communications. A 3D Electromagnetic (EM) tool is used for design and is validated via field measurements with Radio Frequency (RF) equipment. In order to validate the performance of the designed antenna, Received Signal Strength (RSS) experiments were conducted between two vehicles at 2.4 and 5.8 GHz in an open area and on road with a vehicle moving speed of 15 km/h. Further, path loss analysis is done for vehicular environments with line of sight condition are simulated using EM propagation tool and simulated results are compared with empirical model viz., ITU, Two-ray reflection, dual-slope model and COST 231 Walfisch Ikegami model.