Radiation Pattern Synthesis for Arrays of Conformal Antennas Mounted on an Irregular Curved Surface using Modified Genetic Algorithms

Abstract

An E-shaped conformal microstrip antenna array mounted on an irregular curved surface which is similar to an aerocraft cavity in shape is developed in this paper. In view of the narrow bandwidth of the microstrip antenna, an E-shaped element is applied instead of the traditional rectangular element. Furthermore, an element structure of uneven thickness is adopted in order to take into account the effects of the carrier on the resonance frequency and bandwidth of the conformal array. Then, an 8-element conformal microstrip antenna array is designed and the radiation pattern is synthesized using the modified genetic algorithms (MGAs). Compared with the standard genetic algorithms (SGAs), MGAs has a much more fast convergence speed and need less computational time to reach the expected value. The result shows that the optimized azimuth radiation pattern is almost omnidirectional and the elevation radiation pattern is concentrated in the horizontal direction. It can be seen that the proposed method of MGAs is an effective means for designing the conformal antenna array on an irregular curved surface.