Aircraft Tracking Antenna

Project description

To track and locate aircraft at a maximum distance possible a 4 radial, quarter length dipole antenna was used, along with a bandpass filter, and low noise amplifier. The ground radials and driven element are made from 1.25mm copper wire soldered to SMA bulkhead adapter. From here, a cable passes the received signal to a 1090 MHz bandpass filter. The Filtered signal is then put into a low-noise amplifier and then into the RTL-SDR dongle. The hardware for this design is housed within a green 3D printed structure. Then, using the RTL1090 software the received signal data is dumped into Virtual Radar where location, distance and other flight data regarding the aircraft is displayed. From trial and error the optimal antenna element lengths were found to be approximately 66mm for the ADS-B signals.