Automated design and optimization of VHF/UHF automotive conformal antennas

A growing trend in the automobile industry requires new antennas to be conformal to the vehicle body. The design of automotive conformal antennas is a multivariable problem with multiple requirements. Traditionally, it has been based on intuitive experimental approaches, simple structures, and existing designs. Currently, there are no integrated computational tools available to effectively design such type of antennas that we are aware of. This dissertation presents an approach for developing and implementing an algorithm to analyze, design/synthesize, and optimize VHF/UHF automotive conformal antennas by combining the Method of Moments (MoM) for analysis and the Genetic Algorithm (GA) for optimization. In this study, the FM frequency band is of particular interest since the size of an automobile is on the order of one wavelength in this band. Therefore, the vehicle body is a resonant structure and must be considered an integral part of the FM antenna.; An integrated user-friendly computer code is developed and implemented to provide optimal VHF/UHF conformal antenna geometries for different types of automobiles. The efficient integration of the MoM and the GA is achieved by implementing a proper cost function. The development of a wise cost function based on the theory of multiobjective optimization and the performance needs of the automotive industry is presented. An image of the cost function behavior as a function of the antenna geometry can be generated to show the parameters for the optimum antenna design as well as those that offer nearly optimum performance since they might represent a more robust, cost-effective design.; The results of using the integrated code to design/synthesize and optimize a conformal backlite antenna in the FM band are provided. Performance characteristics of the optimized design for this specific application are compared to measurements on a scale vehicle.