Analysis and Synthesis of Large Scale Conformal Antenna Based on Hybrid Layout

In this paper, a large scale conformal antenna array which contains both end-fire antenna elements and upper-directional antenna elements on its layout is proposed for desired full-space scanning characteristics. For the efficient analysis and synthesis of large scale conformal antenna arrays with hybrid layout, an improved aperture projection method is proposed based on the Taylor distribution with low side-lobe properties. This method utilizes active patterns of antenna elements, which contain mutual coupling information, in order to minimize the synthetic error caused by mutual coupling among the conformal array. An extra filtering strategy of antenna elements is also developed to improve the efficiency of large array synthesis in different scanning direction. Validity of this proposed synthetic method is verified by full-wave electromagnetic (EM) calculation of a sample conformal array.

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