How to make Crossed Dipole antenna with Cylindrical Dipoles

Hello, I am attempting to model an antenna array of crossed dipoles and realized that the dipole object returns a strip dipole element instead of a cylindrical dipole. The crossed dipole object does not seem able to accept the cylindrical dipole as an element input and would like to know how to make a crossed dipole element such that all contributions in all directions are accounted for. Thanks!

Answer 1

[Raag]

Hi Felipe,

It is my understanding that you are trying to model an antenna array of crossed dipoles using cylindrical dipole elements rather than the default strip dipole geometry, and you have found that the crossedDipole object does not directly accept cylindricalDipole as an element input.

The Antenna Toolbox provides a dedicated cylindricalDipole object for modeling cylindrical dipole antennas with finite radius and length. Since the crossedDipole object is specifically designed for strip dipole geometry and does not provide options to modify the dipole element type to cylindrical, you will need to construct the crossed configuration manually.

The recommended approach is to create two separate cylindricalDipole elements and combine them using conformalArray, positioning them at the same spatial location with one rotated 90 degrees relative to the other around the axis perpendicular to both elements.

You can control the orientation of each element using rotation parameters to achieve the crossed configuration, ensuring that both polarizations are properly represented. This gives you full control over the radius, length, orientation, and feed configuration of each cylindrical dipole element while accurately representing the electromagnetic coupling and radiation pattern of the crossed dipole arrangement.

You can refer to the following documentations for more information:

• conformalArray: https://www.mathworks.com/help/antenna/ref/conformalarray.html
• Antenna Designer app: https://www.mathworks.com/help/antenna/ref/antennadesigner-app.html

[Felipe]

Hey Raag,

Thank you for your reply. I have attempted to take this approach, but it looks like when I attempt to use a conformalArray object as the element input for a conformalArray, I get an error that I cannot use that object type. For clarity, I have attempted to (in general) create an antenna array using a conformalArray object with crossedDipole elements to then model its characteristics. Thanks and let me know if there's anything else that can be done.