Conformal Beam-Scanning Arrays: Survey, analysis, and benchmarking.

Conformal arrays can be ubiquitously found in several applications, from air- and spacecraft to wearable and implantable bioelectronics, including long-established usage in the automotive and telecommunication industries. On the one hand, the possibility of fitting on curved surfaces and achieving beam-scanning performance that overcomes the limitations of conventional planar arrays justifies their widespread use. On the other hand, their geometric complexity makes the electromagnetic analysis and synthesis of these structures computationally costly tasks. In this context, this survey presents a review of the state of the art in conformal array theory and its applications. Additionally, a generalized analytic formulation for the fast analysis of conformal arrays is presented, addressing aspects previously overlooked, such as the depolarization effects of scanning arrays. Finally, the proposed algorithm is used to benchmark the beam scanning of conformal arrays against the corresponding planar ones and to define analytically the weighting coefficients for maximum directivity without costly optimization routines.