Design of antennas mounted on complex platforms using the characteristic mode (CM) and characteristic basis (CB) function methods

In this chapter, we will discuss two types of antenna design strategies, tailored for two different categories of antenna design problems. First of these will address the well-known problem of designing a multiband antenna, to be mounted on a mobile phone platform, to simultaneously cover the typical communication bands, for example, LTE, GSM, Bluetooth, WiMax, etc., with only a single antenna tailored for the platform, as is usually the requirement, except for MIMO applications. Next, we will turn to the problem of designing a plurality of antennas to be located on a complex platform to achieve certain radiation characteristics deemed desirable by the user, in order to receive the desired signals while suppressing the interfering ones. While several methods for radiation pattern synthesis of antennas exist in literature, They are only applicable to specific antenna geometries and they typically do not handle complex structures. The pattern synthesis problem is of great interest in many practical applications, for example, global positioning system (GPS) antenna design, and locating multiple antennas mounted on the rooftop of a large vehicle, or on the topside of a ship.