The Extended Manifold for Antenna Arrays

Abstract

The paper investigates a general parametric model for the manifold of polarization sensitive arrays based on representing each antenna by a collection of short dipoles. The manifold has a simple form consisting of an extended isotropic manifold, vertical and horizontal direction vectors and a constant non-square coupling matrix. The resulting manifold captures the effects of coupling, polarization and antenna characteristics. It provides an accurate representation of the analytic manifold which is based on electromagnetic theory. Three methods for computing the Coupling Matrix are described based on: (i) the current distributions in the antennas, (ii) its approximation by a sum of Kronecker products, and (iii) least-squares fit of the analytic and extended manifolds. The accuracy of these manifolds is illustrated by numerical examples.