Systematic Generation of Arbitrary Antenna Geometries

Abstract

Applications for conformal, wearable antennas are growing for consumer electronics. Hence, it is important to assess to what degree antenna performance can be tolerant to <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">in situ</i> deformations that can take the form of bending, crumpling, and twisting and combinations of these effects. However, generating geometries of arbitrary antenna deformations such as bending, crumpling, and twisting, which can be processed by standard electromagnetic (EM) software, is a major challenge that significantly complicates full assessment of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">in situ</i> antenna performance. Constructive solid geometry methods of generating geometries is difficult to robustly apply to nonconformal antennas and more flexible techniques required to progress the antenna studies further. To address this challenge, this article investigates the utility of the green coordinate (GC) method for spatial manipulation of 3-D objects. First, calibration of a straightforward application of the GC method against a reference case of a patch antenna bent over a cylindrical surface, which can also be generated exactly, is undertaken. This article shows that systemic scaling distortions are introduced by the GC method and introduces a compensation method that can overcome these distortions. Subsequently, the compensated method is used to obtain new predictions of the EM performance of patch antennas with deformations.