Students of Novosibirsk State Technical University (NETI) upgraded the Vivaldi antenna, making it double, to receive a repeater that both receives and transmits the signal.
"There are conditions when reliable signal reception is impossible due to the difficult terrain or the remoteness of the settlement from the main cell tower. Therefore, the issue of providing subscribers with uninterrupted and reliable communication is relevant. In this situation, they resort to using an active or passive signal retranslator. The advantage of a passive retranslator is its independence from the power source and lower final price compared with active repeaters. We used a conventional Vivaldi antenna, which is famous for its simplicity and broadband. Since we needed a retranslator that works both ways, we added a mirror to it. It turned out to be a double Vivaldi. After that, we started further upgrading it to obtain the best parameters in the simulation," said Evgeny Russki and Alexey Grigoriev, third year students of the Faculty of Radio Engineering and Electronics of NSTU-NETI.
The developers conducted a literature review, on the basis of which frequencies and a prototype antenna for a passive retranslator were selected, calculations were performed, the antenna was modeled, and a prototype was created. According to them, the novelty lies in the creation of a retranslator from the Vivaldi antenna. Retranslators are always narrowband and operate only at a certain frequency with a certain operator, and the antenna created does not have these restrictions. Considering the active provision of high-speed mobile Internet to small settlements in Russia, this antenna may be of interest to mobile operators because, since it will be useful for remote regions of the country.
"At the moment, there is a prototype antenna of a passive retranslator that provides operation on mobile and Internet frequencies. The antenna is compact and consists of a printed circuit board made of fiberglass. In the future, we plan to simulate the antenna parameters and see how it amplifies the signal. In addition, we will make an installation that will measure the antenna parameters. In the future, we would like to apply for a patent," the developers added.
