Abstract
In this paper, a concentric circular antenna array (CCA) is proposed to improve the performance of High-Altitude Platform Wireless Sensor Network (HAPWSN). This CCA is optimized using a modified Dolph–Chebyshev feeding function and designed for two cell sizes. The WSN is formed by a HAP, which acts as a global sink and a set of ground sensors. The communications performance of this network is examined using existing practical sensor technologies at two different frequencies (2.4GHz and 868MHz) and two corresponding bit rates (250kbps and 38.4kbps) where it shows the capability of establishing communications link between the HAP sink and the ground sensors. A comparison between the proposed CCA and conventional antenna techniques that give the same cell specifications shows that the link performance in terms of the bit energy-to-noise power spectral density ratio can be increased by 11.37dB for cells of 8km radius and by 16.8dB in the case of 30km radius cells which indicates the capability of establishing HAPWSN at 2.4GHz.