Analysis of antennas on board arbitrary structures modeled by NURBS surfaces

Abstract

An accurate and efficient numerical scheme has been developed for predicting high-frequency radiation patterns of antennas mounted on arbitrary structures modeled by parametric surfaces. The method is based on geometric optics (GO) and the uniform theory of diffraction (UTD). Nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS) surfaces have been used to describe the geometry of the structure. As most of the computer-aided geometric design (CAGD) tools available in the industry are biased on NURBS, the scheme can perform the electromagnetic analysis without any new or additional remeshing of the geometrical model. A special ray-tracing technique that combines GO and UTD with NURBS has been developed. This technique uses some selective criteria in order to identify rapidly the NURBS where a ray impact may occur. Impact point coordinates are obtained by means of an optimization procedure based on the conjugate gradient method (CGM). The accuracy and efficiency of the approach are shown comparing it with other methods.