A Comparison of Macro Basis Function Methods for Interconnected Endfire Antenna Arrays

Two approaches to the macro basis function (MBF) method that target interconnected subdomains have been adapted to finite linear arrays, and benchmarked against each other in order to estimate their performance with respect to the strong near field coupling that occurs under the endfire mode operation. The methods, here referred to as methods A and B, are based on the synthetic function and characteristic basis function method, respectively, presented in the previous literature. The occurrence of very strong near-field coupling can be seen to affect the number of MBFs required for a certain level of accuracy, although both approaches perform well under the test scenario. However, method B provides a considerably more efficient compression with respect to a maximum acceptable error level.