Design and Performance of Conformal Microstrip Patch Arrays on Cylindrical Surfaces

Conformal microstrip patch arrays are used in many applications for mobile communications pertaining to satellites, spacecrafts and aircrafts. The paper shows the mathematical treatment of such conformal microstrip arrays using a spectral domain approach. The attainable radiation patterns with respect to the number of patches, the patch size, the cylinder diameter etc. are shown. Several possibilities for the practical realisation of microstrip patch arrays are discussed and the measured results for frequencies from 10.3 GHz up to 36.5 GHz are presented. Excellent agreement between calculated and measured results are achieved.