In this paper, we study the influence of the radius of a cylindrical
supporting structure on radiation properties of a conformal millimeter-wave
antenna array. Bent antenna array structures on cylindrical surfaces may have
important applications in future mobile devices. Small radii may be needed if
the antenna is printed on the edges of mobile devices and in items which human
beings are wearing, such as wrist watches, bracelets and rings. The antenna
under study consists of four linear series-fed arrays of four patch elements
and is operating at 58.8 GHz with linear polarization. The antenna array is
fabricated on polytetrafluoroethylene substrate with thickness of 0.127 mm due
to its good plasticity properties and low losses. Results for both planar and
conformal antenna arrays show rather good agreement between simulation and
measurements. The results show that conformal antenna structures allow
achieving large angular coverage and may allow beam-steering implementations if
switches are used to select between different arrays around a cylindrical
supporting structure.Comment: Keywords: conformal antenna, millimeter-wave communications, patch
antenna array. 11 pages, 10 figures, 1 tabl