Overlapped subarray decomposition method for an effective simulation of electrically large planar arrays of antennas

This study presents an overlapped subarray decomposition method to effectively simulate electrically large planar array of antennas, where the extracted subarrays can be simulated in parallel by commercial codes in a distributed fashion. This method is relatively simple and allows one to obtain a reasonable result within the acceptable level of accuracy for the engineering purpose. A plug-in code can be built up by using a commercial code as a computational engine. The characteristics of this method are investigated by considering the simulation of a dipole antenna array via the application of the method of moments (MoM). It is also validated by performing a realistic design of microstrip patch antennas. The comparisons with measurement results are performed and summarised.