New Drone Antenna Enables Jamming of Drone Swarms

BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fractal Antenna Systems, Inc. (“FRACTAL”) today revealed a miniaturized drone antenna that allows new opportunities to thwart adversaries. Dubbed the FeathR™ antenna, the patented and patent-pending antenna combines small size, wide bandedness, lower weight and low radar visibility, making it a game changer in drone warfare.

A common scenario to stop drone swarms is attack by high powered microwaves. While effective, this jamming method requires a vehicle or vessel support and a clear shot at an incoming drone swarm, projected from a distance of hundreds of yards or more. This restriction severely limits the opportunities to neutralize most drone swarms, which are designed to fly low in obscuring terrain or in a ground effect sea layer, thus aggravating the opportunity for such clear shots.

The new FeathR™ antenna takes a different approach. Its small size but wideband response allows modest powered drone-born jamming transmitters to fly into the adversarial drone swarm, on a moment’s notice, jamming them from inside the swarm, irrespective of what frequencies the drone swarm employs.

As inventor Nathan Cohen states: “The FeathR™ antenna puts the wolf in the middle of the hen house.”

The first drone project from FRACTAL’s Owl Works, the FeathR™ antenna demonstrates FRACTAL’s unique ability to devise solutions in weeks, not years. Cohen adds: “With thirty years of enterprise experience, the right team, and some AI assistance, it’s a whole new ballgame in near real-time solutions, a unique feature of FRACTAL that is not surpassed by the large primes. Cost-effective and fast are now the new rules in electromagnetics.”

Built with consideration of stealthy attributes and wideband specifications, the FeathR™ antenna can take almost all waveforms and deliver the goods on jamming drone swarms. An added option is the ability to do up and downlink from ground based, spaced based, or air based control platforms. In other words, the FeathR™ antenna can jam without jamming itself.

The new antenna will be limited to defense use and sold as a developer’s kit to select users.

ABOUT FRACTAL
Fractal Antenna Systems provides off-the-shelf and custom antenna and electromagnetic cutting edge solutions to a wide range of end markets and applications. FRACTAL has deployed tens of thousands of high-performance antennas for public safety, telecom, aviation, IoT, medical, and government/military applications, among others. For questions about FRACTAL’s capabilities, products, or custom solutions – visit FRACTAL’s website at www.fractenna.com or contact directly at [e-mail].