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Chuck Turtle and Rob Vincent watch as antenna is tested. |
Navy gives URI’s small antenna big results
The news last June that Rob Vincent, a Physics Department employee, had shrunk the antenna size without shrinking its effectiveness, produced a large group of Doubting Thomases worldwide. Prove it, they demanded.
Vincent and URI, with the help of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and its antenna test range on Fishers Island, N. Y., have done just that.
On March 31, 14 versions of Vincent’s Distributed Load Monopole (DLM) antennas were put through a battery of validation tests. The results exceeded Vincent’s and URI’s expectations. Smaller is better.
The Navy center responds to a wide variety of military and commercial requests for testing antennas at its Fishers Island over-water range, the only such range of its kind in the world. The URI antennas were tested using the same methods and instrumentation as those used to test and certify Navy antenna systems.
Industry regards such testing as dependable as science permits and often includes the center’s data with products to assure customers of its performance specifications.
More than 200 businesses, companies, and government agencies have contacted URI seeking information for automotive, marine, and military applications, among others, since the antenna announcement last year. A patent is pending on Vincent’s technology. The inventor has made the University of Rhode Island and its Physics Department partners that will benefit from any revenue his invention earns.
URI is close to securing several license agreements. In addition, prototypes have been developed for numerous applications.
By Jan Wenzel
