| One of the critical design specifications in microwave circuits and antenna elements is the operating frequency bandwidth. While the term bandwidth is loosely defined, most often with antennas it refers to the consistency in the response for the input impedance or far field pattern. Because the antenna size is fixed, designs can only optimize the geometry of the element to obtain a more compromising structure for multiple wavelengths. Traditional antenna optimization does this by using similar, but different contours in geometry. These contours, however, must be mathematically manageable in order to obtain a closed form solution to the optimized design. This means that the expressions which are formed must be differentiable and integratable.;Because of the mathematical constraints of closed form analysis in antenna design, enhanced optimization of antenna elements is not maximized. Numerical techniques have the potential to model and utilize higher orders of spatial frequency, by utilizing more diverse geometrical structures. This means that combinations of higher order functional geometry are needed to gain further optimization of an antenna response. The problem with these techniques, as in any non closed form, is that the complexity in these functions can become unmanageable and computationally exhaustive. While discrete math has been studied for ages, in the past, the hardware and software power was not available to develop a tool which carries out these computations efficiently. With recent computer software computation and memory advancements, solvers can utilize hardware platforms which execute numerical techniques much more efficiently.;Although these numerical solvers can provide answers to relatively any geometric structure, the solution to the optimal antenna structure must be guided. This requires the development of a system which implements intrinsic antenna information, and procedures that guide the solver. In this research, in order to show the development of this capability, an intrinsic broad band antenna structure of a conical resembling antenna will be studied. The closed form solutions to both the input impedance and far field will be analyzed, and the areas for optimization in the geometry will be examined. Because of the need for conformal antenna structures, the two dimensional version of a cone, which forms a bow tie plate antenna, will be used as the optimizing structure. An intuitive procedure, driven by spatial frequency, will modify the edge geometry of the structure to optimize the input impedance response. These responses will be analyzed with the numerical solver, and limitations will be addressed to the amount of change in the geometry that is allowed. Once an optimal simulated response is found, the antenna will be physically built and measured to verify the validity of the optimization process. |
