Sectorial cylindrical patch antenna for broadband at sea wireless nodes installed on vessels

The paper presents a concept of the cylindrical antenna for broadband networks to be deployed on seas and oceans where traffic is dense. An important leading application of cylindrical antenna arrays, are becoming broadband wireless systems with mobile nodes and ad-hoc set-up topology. One of the main network types is the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard designed for long-range wireless broadband access. It uses a TDMA-based scheme in media access control (MAC) level and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) at the physical layer. At the MAC layer the IEEE 802.16d supports two modes, point-to-multi-point (PMP) mode and mesh mode. The main reasons driving interests in the cylindrical antennas for such networks, is their ability to provide gain advantage for radio link budget and offering design opportunities to spatial access. The presented cylindrical antenna array is able to provide, either overlapping several sector beams or by little disturbed omnidirectional pattern in the azimuth plane. In practical terms, the main evaluation criterions of such cylindrical antenna arrays are link radio performance and range of robust communication with implemented protocols. Furthermore, little troublesome operation and durability are important to antenna evaluation.