Patch antennas on finite and infinite cylindrical surface structures

The growing demand of more complex antennas in aerospace, mobile communication and in automotive applications requires the engineering of more sophisticated antennas like conformal antennas. Because of constructional as well as economical reasons microstrip patch antennas are ideal for this purpose. To apply well-established planar antenna concepts to curved surfaces special simulation software is necessary. This paper deals with patch antenna arrays on cylindrical surfaces. In the case of a complete cylindrical structure with large ("close to infinite") dimensions in the axial direction exact analytical methods can be applied. However in practical situations the surface can only be approximated by finite cylinder sectors. Such structures cannot be treated analytically any more, thus numerical techniques are required. The authors describe both approaches, for infinite and finite geometries, in detail.