Design of a conformal microstrip antenna array mounted on an irregular dielectric surface

A conformal microstrip antenna array mounted on a finite irregular dielectric surface is developed in this paper. In order to take into account the effects of the irregular dielectric surface, the VSWR and the radiation patterns of a single antenna element mounted on the finite irregular dielectric surface are measured. Then, an 8×2 conformal microstrip antenna array is designed using particle swarm optimization (PSO). The conformal array is also fabricated and the measured VSWR and the radiation patterns of the conformal array are presented. The measured results show that the proposed procedure is an effective means for designing the conformal antenna array on an irregular dielectric surface.