Thick wire concept applied on a Bi-quad antenna to enlarge the bandwidth

For a video signal relaying application, a directive antenna element, which will be part of an array, is investigated. The element needs to achieve a bandwidth larger than 15% of the center frequency such that it can cope with environmental conditions like rain, fog, and icing. To be able to achieve such large bandwidth the thick wire concept is applied on a bi-quad antenna. The traditional wire bi-quad antenna is transformed into a planar thick wire variant where a 28% frequency bandwidth is achieved by broadening the copper tracks. Furthermore, the planar configuration is more rigid to be able to cope with mechanical stress during flight.