Hi Will,
You can design an antenna array with arbitrary geometry using the 'Conformal' Array type in the Antenna Array Designer.
This allows you to place new elements by clicking the antenna and positioning it anywhere on any canvas plane (XY, YZ, ZX). And to rotate any element, update the value in 'Tilt(deg)' and 'TiltAxis' property.
You can launch the Antenna Array Designer by executing the following command:
>>antennaArrayDesigner
Also, you can start it by searching in the app section.
Alternatively, you can design programmatically using the ‘ConformalArray’ object in the Antenna Toolbox. Below is an example that demonstrates how to design an array of dipole antennas stacked vertically along the z-axis.
numDipoles = 5;
% Spacing between dipoles (in meters)
spacing = 0.2;
% Frequency of operation (in Hz)
frequency = 1e9; % 1 GHz
% Speed of light
c = physconst('LightSpeed');
% Wavelength
wavelength = c / frequency;
% Create the dipole antenna element with specified dimensions
dipoleElement = dipole('Length', wavelength/2, 'Width', wavelength/100);
% Define positions of dipoles in the array
elementPositions = zeros(3, numDipoles);
for i = 1:numDipoles
% Position each dipole in the z-direction
elementPositions(:, i) = [0; 0; (i-1)*spacing];
end
% Create a antenna array with dipole elements
dipoleArray = conformalArray('Element', dipoleElement, 'ElementPosition', elementPositions');
% Display array structure
figure();
show(dipoleArray);
title('Vertically Stacked Dipole Antenna Array');
% Radiation pattern
figure();
pattern(dipoleArray, frequency, 'Type', 'directivity', 'CoordinateSystem', 'polar');
ax = gca;
margin = 0.1; % 10% top margin
ax.Position(4) = ax.Position(4) - margin;
title('Radiation Pattern');
Feel free to adjust the antenna parameters, such as dimensions and spacing, to meet your specific application or specifications.
For more information on using 'conformalArray', please refer to the following MATLAB Documentation
