Conformal Antennas on Singly-Curved Surfaces

Conformal antennas are being investigated or use in an ever increasing number of applications. Traditional conformal antennas operate as resonant structures that radiate efficiently over a fairly narrow range of frequencies. Many useful conformal designs have been developed using approximate formulae and integral equations that utilize surface currents. However, with emerging wide bandwidth antennas that incorporate a variety of materials in their construction, other means for calculating the performance of candidate designs are useful. One approach is a hybrid finite element-boundary integral (FE-BI) formulation. This has been presented in the literature previously; however, in this paper advances in implementation will be discussed along with a novel example.