Arbitrarily shaped microstrip antennas on cylinders

Conformal microstrip antennas are currently of great interest in both the military and civilian sectors. There are, however, few accurate analytical models and "cut and try" design methods are problematic due to the curvature of the surface and often yield antennas with sub-optimal performance. This paper discusses a new, "full-wave" CAD model for arbitrarily shaped microstrip antennas on cylinders with a flexible, user-friendly interface and summarizes, for the antenna de signer, the often undesirable effects of curvature on antenna performance.