Radiation pattern synthesis for conformal antenna arrays

The synthesis of conformal antenna arrays is complicated by the impossibili ty of factorizing the analytical expression for the power pattern into an e lement factor and an array factor. This article describes a general method of pattern synthesis that, given a well-defined single-element power patter n, is applicable to arrays of arbitrary geometry. Essentially, the method u ses simulated annealing to optimize the excitation distribution so as to mi nimize the difference between the power pattern it generates and the desire d power pattern.