Holistic Analysis of Conformal Antennas Using the Cylindrical TLM Method

The impact of deformations on wearable antenna performance has been analyzed both experimentally and computationally. The reported results have been inconsistent and often contradictory. This article highlights how the choice of computational mesh, namely, cubic and curvilinear cylindrical mesh, applied to the problem of a cylindrically bent antenna can affect the results and subsequent conclusions. Deploying both meshes within the same time-domain numerical algorithm means that the differences in results can only be attributable to the discretization method used. Finally, a cylindrical mesh is used to further characterize the impact of bending on antenna resonant frequency, bandwidth, and radiation pattern. Bending in both E- and H-plane is considered.