Numerical Modelling of Aircraft Antenna Installations

With the advent of faster computers and accelerated methods, numerical modelling techniques have become increasingly suitable for the design and verification of antenna installations on aircraft, but it is necessary to validate their performance. In this paper we report on comparisons made between calculations and measurements of antenna radiation patterns performed on an 1/18th scale model of a generic single aisle passenger jet. Two types of antenna were considered: VHF blade antennas (to verify the validity of an equivalent model of a complex antenna structure) and Air Traffic Control (ATC) antennas (to check the validity at higher frequencies). Very good comparisons were obtained between measurements and calculations when one simulates the details of the measurements.