Radiation pattern computations for spherical-rectangular microstrop antennas

Microstrip antennas may be mounted on spherical surfaces on some vehicles of practical interest such as missiles and satellites. One possible application, for example, might be to build phased array microstrip radiators on a spherical surface to give wide angle scan capability much like that of a Luneberg lens antenna. The cavity model method is used to obtain the electric field at the edge of the radiating patch. Then, the radiation field may be evaluated from the edge field for a given excitation current. A spherical-rectangular microstrip structure is studied. The study is based on the assumption that the thickness of the dielectric layer is much smaller than the radius of the ground sphere. Then, the radiation frequency for single mode radiation is defined and the radiation patterns for typical spherical-rectangular microstrip antennas are presented.