• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.367-371
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• 2014

When the crew or passengers fall into the water due to marine accident of vessel, it is very important to rescue them quickly. In the case of marine accidents, most people in distress have been wearing a lifejacket, so if the GPS and Cospas-Sarsat communication module will be integrated within the lifejacket, it is easy to rescue them. In this paper, development of the dual band lifejacket-integrated antenna for GPS and Cospas-Sarsat communication is discussed. The antenna with the FR-4 substrate of 0.2mm thickness for flexibility was designed that it can be fitted close to the shoulder of the life jacket and operate at 1.575GHz and 406MHz. The GPS communication antenna was implemented with a ring-slot antenna having a circular polarized characteristic and a meander type linear polarized antenna is used as Cospas-Sarsat communication. The two antennas are fed by a single microstrip line and an open stub is used to minimize the mutual interference between the two antennas. The performance of the fabricated antenna attached to the life vest is confirmed by the measurement of the return loss at GPS and Cospas-Sarsat frequency bands.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.473-478
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• 2015

In this paper, we suggest a flexible multiband antenna which can be equipped on an inflatable life-jacket. The antenna can send distress alert and location data of survivors to assist rescue operation when crew or people are in distress. The antenna operate in three frequency bands such as VHF-DSC band (156MHz), COSPAS-SARSAT band (406MHz) and GPS band (1,575MHz). The GPS band is implemented with a square ring-slot planar antenna, the COSPAS-SARSAT band and the VHF-DSC band antenna is implemented by monopole type. In order to give flexibility of substrate to be equipped on life-jacket, FR4-epoxy substrate of thickness 0.2mm is used to make antenna. The reflection coefficients of the fabricated antenna are -8.8dB, -20.4dB and -10.7dB at each bandwidth like VHF-DSC, COSPAS-SARSAT and GPS band, respectively, when people are wearing life-jacket integrated multiband antenna.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.455-462
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• 2015

In this paper, we suggested multiband antenna that can be equipped on a inflatable life-jacket, operating VHF-DSC band(156 MHz), COSPAS-SARSAT band(406 MHz) and GPS band(1,575 MHz) for search and rescue survivors quickly. The GPS band antenna was implemented with a square ring-slot planar antenna, and the COSPAS-SARSAT and VHF-DSC band antenna were implemented meander type dipole antennas. In order to place the antenna on a life-jacket, we installed it on 0.2 mm thickness FR-4 substrate to obtain a flexibility. It appeared that the antenna has -14.6 dB, -30.9 dB, and -18 dB return loss in COSPAS-SARSAT, GPS, and VHF-DSC band, respectively. In addition, its gain has 0.83 dBi, 2.1 dBi in COSPAS-SARSAT and GPS band, respectively.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.62-68
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• 2012

The planar microstrip antenna for the safety communication of life at sea is designed and manufactured to effectively receive the emergency wireless signal from the transmitter on the life vest. The proposed microstrip antenna in this paper is easy to make, light weight and cheap compared to other antennas because of printed antenna fabrication. To overcome the narrow bandwidth, large size and low gain characteristics of microstrip antenna, we use the IDMA(Identical Dual Patch Microstrip Antenna with Air-Gap) structure. The proposed antenna was fabricated with the use of 1.6mm FR4 and measured with the 28.7MHz(6.6%) of bandwidth and 3.04dBi of gain at the frequency of 426MHz. To validate the proposed antenna, we experimented the possible distance range at sea using the commercial UHF transceiver module and obtained over 5km distance for stable communication. This antenna can be widely applied to application of the UHF wireless mobile communication.