Ultra‐Wideband Electrostrictive Mechanical Antenna

Abstract Mechanical antennas based on piezoelectric materials can effectively reduce the size of long wave antennas down to 1/1000 of the wavelength (from km scale to mm level). However, the narrow bandwidth and weak field intensity seriously restrict its practical applications in transmission distance and channel capacity. Here, a mechanical antenna‐based electrostrictive effect of relaxor ferroelectric ceramic (PMN‐PT) is proposed to improve radiation capacity and achieve ultra‐wideband characteristics (10 kHz–1 MHz). Due to the ultra‐high dielectric constant at working temperature and the relationship between the strain and applied field intensity, the proposed antenna gets rid of the dependence on the poled materials and exhibits excellent communication properties beyond traditional mechanical antennas, which are experimentally demonstrated by a practical wireless communication system. Only using a single proposed mechanical antenna with 8 mm diameter and 3 mm thickness, the effective communication with a transmission distance of 200 m can be realized. This design offers a promising way of constructing mechanical antennas for long‐wave communication.