Conformal Antenna Optimization with Space Mapping

Abstract

The space mapping (SM) technique is applied to conformal antenna design for the first time. A planar microstrip antenna printed on a finite ground-plane with a coarse-mesh is solved as the coarse model and aligned with a conformal microstrip antenna placed on a platform's surface with a fine-mesh through space mapping. When some conformal antennas have the same planar configuration, being able to share a common coarse model is an important advantage of this technique in these conformal antenna optimizations. The S-parameters of conformal antennas are optimized. The function responses in this example are chosen as "e ^S11". The comparisons of efficiency and accuracy with the commercial software CST MWS 5.0 are made. The final results demonstrate that the SM technique can reduce the overall design process by an order of magnitude (10 times). Therefore, the proposed technique is particularly suitable for conformal antenna optimization. As a demonstration, examples of a planar broadband E-shape microstrip antenna placed on two different platform' surfaces are introduced in this communication.