Lightweight Conformal Filtering Antenna Based on Stacking of Multi-Corrugated Polyimide Films

A lightweight and stacked conformal filtering antenna is demonstrated using copper-cladded polyimide films (CCPF). The antenna consists of primary, secondary, and parasitic patches as rectangular stubs using multi-corrugated polyimide films to improve bending performance. Good filtering performance is obtained by stub-loading of parasitic elements attached to both ends of the primary radiator. Bandwidth (BW) enhancement is achieved by stacking of corrugated polyimide films combined with nylon spacers, forming a five-layer antenna design. For the flat case, the antenna has a BW ranging from 1.17 GHz to 1.38 GHz (16.5%) and nearly flat gain response with a maximum gain of 8.6 dBi at 1.29 GHz. The antenna is fabricated and measured for the flat case and conformed to cylinders with radii <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$R_{c} 200 ~\text{mm}, 160 ~\text{mm}, 100 ~\text{mm}, 80 ~\text{mm}$</tex>, and 40 mm.