EFFECT OF VARYING CURVATURE AND INTER ELEMENT SPACING ON DIELECTRIC COATED CONFORMAL MICROSTRIP ANTENNA ARRAY

In the design of a conformal patch antenna array, a special care must be taken regarding the placement of elements and curvature bending. Presently, the authors try to explain the effect of these two factors on the key parameters such as return loss, mutual coupling, gain and directivity. Here, the analyses of parameters are done under the consideration of dielectric coated two-element antenna array model. This paper attempts to examine the characteristics of the dielectric coated conformal antenna array by varying its inter element spacing on the changing cylindrical geometry. The twoelement conformal array is considered in E-plane and H-plane configurations, and its parameters are analyzed using full wave analysis and verified by HFSS tool. A comparative study shows that the E-plane configuration gives better result than H-plane configuration.