Synthesis to Design Spherical and Deformed Spherical Antenna Array Structures

ABSTRACT Antenna array is a key component in various communication systems these days. Rather than various linear and planar array structures, antenna elements are strictly conformed to the curved‐shape surfaces they are mounted in conformal antenna arrays. In some specific designs, antenna arrays are required to be fixed with the curved surface like airborne systems, rockets, missiles and space shuttles. In this study, an array factor is derived for a spherical conformal antenna array in cylindrical coordinates as a group combination of various circular antenna arrays with different radius at uniform height steps. For the purpose, the array factors of circular (as a ring version of vertical linear array) and cylindrical (as a linear version of circular array) antenna arrays are derived in the first step. In the second step, a ring‐based spherical structure is developed with the upgradation of cylindrical mathematical array factor derivation. In the third step, MATLAB codes are developed to numerically calculate and display the beam patterns of antenna arrays (circular, cylindrical and spherical) in cylindrical coordinate system. Finally, for the validation of proposed synthesis, the profile structures are simulated in HFSS to check if antenna arrays can work in the proposed structural configuration using 5G antenna elements.