SBIR-STTR Award

The growing reliance on wireless electronic systems presents us with a need for new diversity antennas for civilian and military platforms. These antennas must take account of platform curvature, material treatments and nearby interactions, all of which affect the antenna performance. To support the development and design of these antennas, a new generation of analysis is required which retains geometrical adaptability and material generality in addition to being capable of treating small details on large scale platforms. We propose to develop such software by combining two powerful and flexible methods. One of them has already been shown to be highly effective in modeling complex, conformal antenna configurations on doubly curved platforms whereas the second approach is an established methodology for modeling large scale platform interactions. We will develop a software package which integrates the two methods along with improvements for platform treatments and near zone field interactions. The proposed software suite will be run on engineering-class workstations and will rely on CAD geometrical descriptions of the antenna and surrounding platform. We are confident that commercially-viable software will result from this effort and will incorporate a variety of visualization tools (for geometry and antenna parameter display) and graphical interfaces.

There is a growing need for analysis and design of antennas which take into account field interactions with the nearby environment. Examples are platform interactions where material treatments and nearby coupling are important in predicting the near zone pattern and the surface fields. For accurate and fast prediction of these patterns, a new class of algorithms must be employed. Here we propose to develop software which combine existing rigorous antenna modeling techniques with a new fast method for antenna pattern prediction in the presence of complex structures. In Phase I of this effort we showed that indeed significant gains can be achieved by the new modeling approach making practical its implementation for large scale platforms. In Phase II of this effort we will proceed to develop a complete analysis package which which will be useful for a variety of military and commercial applications. The proposed software will be coupled with display tools suitable for PC platforms.