A conformal spherical-circular microstrip antenna: Axisymmetric excitationby an electric dipole

A mathematically accurate method of analysis of a spherical-disk antenna co nformally printed on a dielectric-covered metallic sphere is presented. The antenna is fed by a radial coaxial probe simulated by an electric dipole. The solution consists of reducing the boundary-value problem to the dual-se ries equations, and further to a regularized infinite-matrix equation. This procedure is based on the analytical inversion of the static part of the p roblem of a disk in free space, and results in a stable and fast algorithm with a guaranteed convergence. Numerical data on the basic antenna characte ristics are presented. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.