A Shape Generation Method for 3D Printed Antennas With Unintuitive Geometries

Abstract

Additive manufacturing used in combination with versatile shape generation methods can enable designers to realize unintuitive antenna designs with bespoke electromagnetic behaviors that would normally be extremely difficult or even impossible to manufacture using conventional techniques. In this paper, we present a new custom algorithm that produces arbitrary three-dimensional (3D) meander line antennas. This algorithm is used in conjunction with multi-objective optimization to create two quadrifilar helix antennas (QHAs) and one monopole antenna, all with unique electromagnetic performances. One QHA has a wide bandwidth, high broadside gain, and compact size, while the other has a dual-band nature with different radiation patterns in each band. Similarly, the monopole example is a dual-wideband design which targets Wi-Fi applications. These structures possess a meander radius that varies with height as well as conductor thickness that varies along the meander path which allows for improved antenna performance over conventional meander line antennas. An example design was fabricated and tested in order to validate the performance of the optimized virtual antenna model.

Keywords

• 3D-printing
• additive manufacturing
• antennas
• dual-band
• multi-objective optimization
• wideband