Circular and polygonal array antennas for electronic steering

The circular (ring) array antenna may be considered as one of the building blocks of a whole family of conformal array antennas, which are antennas structurally integrated to a given surface (Visser, 2005). A cylindrical or circular array of elements has a potential of 360° coverage, either with an omnidirectional beam, multiple beams, or a narrow beam that can be steered over 360°. A typical application could be base station antennas in a mobile communication system, which could result in compact and low-cost installations (Josefsson, 2006). The purpose of this paper is to describe an implementation of electronically steered circular and polygonal array antennas. A procedure to synthesize artificial radiating elements of an array is also presented. Finally, an evolutionary computing optimization and its results are shown.