5.3 A Tool for the CAE of Rectangular Aperture Antenna Arrays

In the previous section, we proposed a general background to the problem of the effective and efficient numerical analysis of aperture arrays. We saw that at least four different approaches can be pursued to study the radiating properties, taking into account the relevance of mutual coupling among apertures, and we still have to identify the most suitable for our purposes.

Truly, the development of a CAE tool for such devices is a wider and more complex effort, as mutual coupling is just one of the difficulties to be faced. In this section, we propose a possible way to schematize the structure of a candidate CAE environment, by partitioning the whole task into four main subtasks and describing them separately. The following sections will focus on how to integrate them in the framework of a parallel, grid-amenable tool.

Let us assume that a system must be analyzed. It is composed of a certain number of feeders (typically horns) and the relative flange-mounted rectangular apertures. A real system was proposed in Figure 5.1, reporting a seven-aperture array for satellite applications at 3.7 GHz. The challenges of CAE of such rectangular aperture antenna arrays can be partitioned into several subproblems, namely:

1. Evaluation of the horns' scattering matrices;

2. Evaluation of the aperture array's scattering matrix;

3. Evaluation of the scattering matrix at external physical or electrical ports;

4. Evaluation of the radiation pattern.

Each subproblem can be solved by adopting different strategies and techniques, which...