Design, Placement and Radiation Patterns of Ferrite Patch Conformal Antennas

In this SBIR project, a very flexible conformal patch antenna design computer program will be developed. It will be capable of analysis of printed antennas on planar, singly, and doubly curved surfaces. These antennas are printed on a substrate, may include a superstrate cover, and may be fed via a subsurface aperture. The materials may be multilayered, inhomogeneous, and anisotropic. In particular, ferrite-backed antennas can be designed with this computer program. A variety of patch configurations may be studied for maximal design freedom. Careful computer programming techniques will allow the analysis of very large arrays. This technology has demonstrated in past efforts the ability to design patch antenna arrays with over two hundred (200) elements while running on an engineering-class workstation. The use of state-of-the-art finite element techniques allows unprecedented flexibility to the user. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) will be provided to assure ease-of-use.