Analysis of loop antenna with ground plane for underwater communications

Transmission and reception of high-speed short range signal is important for successful underwater water communications between an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) or Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs) and a docking station or underwater sensor nodes during a survey mission. The need for this form of application is currently receiving global attention from scientific groups and industries. Hence, underwater antennas are therefore required to provide these links and achieve good data rates and propagation distances for these applications either in fresh or sea water scenario. In this paper, the performance of loop antenna placed at a specified distance and parallel to the ground plane is assessed through simulation for usage in fresh water and operating in the High Frequency (HF) band. Three variations of this antenna namely; the circular loop, the square loop and the delta loop antennas has been placed on two different ground plane shapes (circular and square) for analyses of their performances. These antennas were designed in FEKO, an electromagnetic simulation software and their performance is assessed in terms of bandwidth and directivity. The results obtained shows that the antennas exhibit wideband and high directivity with square loop antenna placed on a square ground plane having slight advantages over the other antennas with respect to their bandwidth and directivity. Experimental results added for the same antenna, confirmed its performance in terms of the measured parameters are in good agreement with simulation results.