An Autonomous Self-Adapting Conformal Array for Cylindrical Surfaces with a Changing Radius

Conformal antennas are being used more often in modern wireless communication systems. Because of this increased usage, novel self-adapting arrays have been developed for improving the performance of wireless communication systems that use conformal antennas on changing surfaces. Among the changing surfaces of interest is a cylinder with a varying radius and in this work, the properties of an autonomous self-adapting 4 x 4 conformal array for changing cylindrical surfaces is presented. A sensor circuit is used to measure the radius-of-curvature of the cylindrical surface and this information is used to control phased-shifters in the 4 x 4 conformal array for phase-compensation of the radiation pattern. This array has been denoted as the SELF-adapting FLEXible (SELFLEX) array. Finally, the self-adapting characteristics of the array are validated with measurements and simulations.