Study on the Cylindrical Bending Effects of a Ku-Band Antenna Array Feeding Network

A feeding structure enables the power delivery from source to individual elements in an antenna array. For an array feeding structure conformal to a curved surface, the transmission characteristics of each feeding port changes compared to its planar state. In this paper, we analyze the performance variation of a feeding network for a Ku-band 4 by 4 antenna array when cylindrical bending is applied. A Ku-band feeding structure is designed with uniform and in-phase transmission characteristics. The bending effects, in particular, the excitation non-uniformity among the ports has been studied by simulating the transmission parameters of the feeding structure that are bent towards two orthogonal directions by different angles.