A millimeter-wave conformal phased microstrip antenna array on a cylindrical surface

Abstract

The work presents a design of a cylindrical conformal phased microstrip antenna array. Based on the HFM and the parallel feed network, a conformal microstrip 2 times 8 array on a cylinder surface is designed by the isotropic transformation theory (IT). Simulation results show that the conformal array works at 35GHz and the gain is 19.6dB at the center frequency. The phase-scanned patterns of the conformal 2 times 8 array are analyzed by the CST using phase control method. From the comparison of the scanning results at different phase division, it can be found that the scan angle, the angular width and the side lobe level varies following the trends of the phase division, at the same time, the gain of the conformal array changes markedly opposite the trends of the phase division. Therefore, this is a shortcoming of the conformal phased array. This kind of conformal phased sub-array can be easily expanded into a large-scale conformal array and be suitable for active integration with other microwave circuits and communication systems if this disadvantage was eliminated after further discussion in future.