A Computer-Aided Technique for the Analysis of Embedded Element Patterns of Cylindrical Arrays [EM Programmer's Notebook]

A computer-aided technique is proposed to obtain the embedded characteristics of the elements in a cylindrical phased array using a unitcell approach in Ansys High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS). The proposed technique is general and can be used with other commercially available electromagnetic (EM) products that support periodic boundary conditions. Therefore, it can be widely adopted by engineers and researchers to analyze arbitrary element structures in cylindrical phased arrays. The implementation of the technique is discussed in detail, and the related formulation is presented. The method is verified by comparing its results with published literature as well as results obtained through full-wave analysis of a ring of microstrip patch antennas in HFSS.