Aspects of mesh generation for characteristic-mode analysis [em programmer's notebook]

This paper deals with practical aspects of mesh generation for the theory of characteristic modes. First, we describe a tool for surface-mesh generation in MATLAB. The tool is afterwards used for an analysis of relative convergence of modal results computed by an in-house modal analyzer in MATLAB. Different meshing scenarios are selected for a dipole, a rectangular patch, and a rectangular patch with a slot, and a recommendation for a mesh-refinement strategy is given. The study is supported by a simple error analysis, considering the approximation error in the evaluation of moment-matrix elements. It is shown that the results are also applicable for the commercial implementation in FEKO software.