Conformal Beam-Scanning Arrays: Survey, analysis, and benchmarking

Conformal antenna arrays can fit seamlessly on curved 3D-shaped surfaces, which are found ubiquitously on vehicles, aircraft, the human body, and so on. Another advantage of the nonplanar structures is their ability to overcome the scan loss limitations of conventional planar arrays [1]. However, conformal array technology is still uncommon in commercial applications and is applied mostly to military aviation, missile electronic warfare, and radar systems. Emerging civil use includes aeronautics as well as mobile communications - mobile base stations can be concealed for aesthetic reasons. The smart skin approach [2] integrates on-planar active antenna apertures in curved surfaces adapted to the skin of the platform: aircraft, satellite, car, etc. Biomedical applications are also gaining interest for both in-body [3] and on-body [4], [5] areas of applications.