Additively Manufactured Conformal Load-Bearing Antenna Structure (CLAS)

This paper demonstrates additive manufacturing (AM) based fabrication methods to realize curved surface conformal load-bearing antenna structures (CLAS) where antennas and other associated transmission line elements are embedded within the multifunctional load-carrying structures. Two different fabrication approaches are explored to embed the antenna functionalities within the load-carrying platform. The fabrication methods were validated by designing and fabricating conformal antennas on a curved surface load-bearing structure designed to operate at 6 GHz. The return loss and gain of the additively manufactured example CLAS antennas were measured experimentally and compared to the simulated predictions.