Analysis and measurements of conformal patch array antennas on multilayer circular cylinder

Abstract

In this paper, we present a method of moments (MoM) program to analyze different configurations of arrays of cylindrical-rectangular patches. The patches can be located inside or on the surface of a multilayer circular-cylindrical structure and can be arbitrarily rotated. The antenna structure is rigorously taken into account by using proper Green's functions, and the array is analyzed by using an element-by-element approach. The elements of the MoM matrix are calculated in the spectral domain, and special attention is given to their numerical treatment when analyzing cylindrical antennas with large radii. A laboratory model is built to test different configurations of patches and to validate calculated results. The agreement between measurements and calculations is very good.