Sea-water half-loop antenna for maritime wireless communications

A novel sea-water half-loop antenna is designed at very high frequency (VHF) band for maritime wireless communications. The antenna mainly consists of a capacitive coupling feeding structure and a stream of sea water supplied by a water pump. Commercial software package ANSYS HFSS is used to simulate this antenna. Measured results of the fabricated sea-water half-loop antenna show reasonably good agreement with the simulated ones. This antenna can be reconfigurable and turned off in real time, which makes it well suitable for maritime wireless communications.