Benchmarking Computational Electromagnetics With the Large Resonant Circular Array of Electrically Short and Thick Dipoles

The phenomenon of resonances in large circular arrays of electrically short and thick dipoles was studied intensively in the nineties by Harvard’s Antenna Group, led by R. W. P. King and T. T. Wu. Here, we propose these arrays as a benchmark for modern 3-D computational electromagnetics (CEM) solvers. Our proposed benchmark is challenging because it exhibits resonances which, for judicious choices of the parameters, can be extremely narrow. We present exploratory simulations of our proposed benchmark using COMSOL multiphysics and ANSYS HFSS and give detailed comparisons with previously published results.