Prediction of Experimental Electromagnetic Coupling to a UAV Model Using Characteristic Mode Analysis

In this work, we study the current coupled to a simplified Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) model using a dual computational and experimental approach. The surrogate structure reduced the computational burden and facilitated the experimental measurement of the coupled currents. For a practical system, a wide range of simulations and measurements must be performed to analyze the induced current variations with respect to the incident excitation properties such as the frequency, angle of incidence, and polarization. To simplify this analysis, Characteristic Mode Analysis (CMA) was used to compute the eigen-currents of the UAV model and predict where and under which RF excitation conditions, the coupled current is maximized. We verified these predictions using direct experimental measurement of the coupled currents. The presented simulations and measurements show the usefulness of CMA for studying electromagnetic coupling to practical systems.