Empirical and full-wave techniques for the analysis of cylindrical microstrip antennas and arrays

This paper describes two fast techniques to analyze cylinder-conformal microstrip antennas. The first technique is the discrete mode matching (DMM) method, which is a full-wave technique based on the Green´s function formulated in the spectral domain for multiple layers covering a metallic cylinder. The second one is the cavity model, which is an empirical method based on the assumption that the region between the patch and the ground cylinder can be approximated as a closed cavity. The paper highlights the benefits of each technique and numerical results are given for the case of rectangular single patch design and for the design of circularly polarized circumferential antenna arrays.