ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF CHARACTERISTIC MODE THEORY FOR THE

EFFECTIVE MODELING OF ANTENNAS AND ARRAYS

*


Marta Cabedo-Fabrs
(1)
, Alejandro Valero-Nogueira
(1)
, Miguel Ferrando-Bataller
(1)
, Jose I. Herranz-Herruzo
(1)

(1)
Universidad Politcnica de Valencia
E.T.S.I. Telecomunicacion, UPV
46022 Valencia, Spain
Email:avalero@dcom.upv.es

INTRODUCTION

The method of moments (MoM) is a very common formulation for approximating fields and currents in electromagnetic
problems. To apply the MoM, first the object must be discretized, typically with a discretization of /10. As the electric
size of the object increases, the number of unknowns grows very rapidly. Therefore, when applied to large scale
problems, the MoM provides huge matrix equations that need long computational time and high memory requirements
to be solved.

Some of the attempts that have been made to reduce the size of the MoM matrix equations consist of using high-level
expansion functions [1,2]. The general idea, is to divide the complex geometry into simpler parts, and then to define a
set of sub-sectional basis functions for each subdomain. Finally, the partial solutions obtained by direct inversion, are
combined to form a compressed global moment system.

Another alternative to reduce MoM matrix size, is to use entire domain basis function. Recently, in [3] it has been
proposed to use the Theory of Characteristic Modes defined by Harrington and Mautz in [4], to evaluate the mutual
coupling phenomenon in microstrip arrays. Characteristic modes can be obtained numerically for any arbitrary
geometry, and are defined as the real currents on the surface of a conducting body that depend on its shape and size, and
are independent of any specific source or excitation. For conducting bodies, they have the following important
properties: a) The characteristic currents are real, or equiphasal, over the surface on which they exist, b) they form an
orthogonal set over this surface, and c) they diagonalize the generalized impedance matrix for this surface.

Because of the above mentioned special properties, characteristic modes are particularly suitable to be used as entire
domain basis functions to expand the unknown current. Moreover, for electrically small and intermediate size bodies,
only a few modes are needed to yield a good approximation of the total current. However, characteristic modes present
several important drawbacks. The first one is that, as characteristic modes are computed in the absence of any source or
excitation, they do not take into account the coupling between the source and the structure, and so, they are unable to
model the particular behaviour of the current at the feed point properly. As a result, and as it was shown in [5], when a
delta gap source is used, characteristic modes lead to non convergent solutions for the imaginary part of the total current
and consequently for the input impedance. A second drawback shown by characteristic modes, and probably less known
than the previous one, is their dependency upon frequency which prevents them from being used as wideband basis
functions.

In order to solve both problems we propose firstly the inclusion of an additional entire domain basis function, which we
will term source mode. The source mode models the behaviour of the reactive current at the feed point. Secondly we
propose to generate a new set of frequency independent basis functions to provide convergent results over the whole
frequency range by using a singular value decomposition (SVD) over the frequency-dependent characteristic modes
obtained at a set of equispaced frequencies whithin the band of interest.

SOURCE MODE JUSTIFICATION AND DEFINITION

As it was mentioned in the introduction, characteristic modes associated to a particular radiating structure do not model
properly the imaginary part of the current at the feed point leading to unreliable values for the computed input
impedance. The reason for this lack of convergence lies in the very definition of these modes. Harrington and Mautz [4]
defined the characteristic modes as the eigenfunctions of


*
This work was supported in part by spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologa under projects TIC2000-0591-C03-02 and TIC2001-2364-C03-02.
( ) ( )
n n n
Z J R J =

(1)

where Z(J) is the usual impedance matrix operator obtained after formulating an integro-differential equation. Z(J) must
be symmetric and R(J) is its real part. The eigenvalues are forced to be
n
= 1 + j
n
. It can be shown that this
normalization on the eigenvalues forces each mode to radiate unit power. It is observed that J
n
exhibits an increasingly
oscillatory nature as the mode order increases. Therefore the amplitudes of the eigenvectors must increase accordingly
to maintain unit radiated power. Yee and Garbacz [5] attributed to this behaviour of the modes the lack of convergence
of the imaginary part of the input impedance. Notice however that equation (1) is independent of the source, whether
this is an incident plane-wave or a voltage source and as a result modes can not account properly for its near-field
effects.

If we consider the residue that is left after subtracting a series of characteristic modes from the actual total current of an
antenna, what we obtain as a result resembles a travelling wave with a high peak at the feed point with a rapidly
vanishing profile as we move away from it. In Fig. 1 this residual function is shown for half-wavelength dipole. Since
characteristic modes are mainly associated to radiated power, the primary content of this residue must be reactive. As
can be seen from Fig. 1 the function is nearly singular. This type of behaviour is associated solely to the presence of the
source in the structure and limitis severely the convergence of the characteristic mode series. On the contrary in
scattering problems, where the structure is illuminated by an incident plane wave, convergence of the series is assessed
with a few modes. Due to the travelling wave nature of this evanecent mode it is not an easy task to single it out
analitically from equation (1). Antennas are resonant structures and characteristic modes are its resonances which are
standing waves by definition.
To overcome this problem for the wire antenna class let us consider an infinite wire of radius a fed by a magnetic ring
souce of radius b. All possible current modes along this structure are travelling waves and therefore there should be an
evanescent travelling-wave mode in the vicinity of the source like in finite wires. The magnetic field radiated by the
ring source is known in spectral form


( ) ( )
(2) 0
1 1
4
z
jk z i
z
P
H dk e H k b J k b

= <

(2)

where
2 2 1/ 2
( )
z
k k k

= . Enforcing zero tangential electric field at the wire surface and after some manipulations the
total magnetic field at the wire surface is


( )
( )
( )
( )
(2)
1
1 0
(2)
0 0
2Im
2
z z
k
jk z jk z t
z z
k k
H k b
K b P
H j dk e k dk e
ak K a H k a

| |

= +
'

'
)

(3)

where jk

= . The current flowing along the wire is proportional to the total magnetic field in (3). Two contributions
can be extracted from this spectral representation of the current. The first term is the main contribution to the total
current and if the wire were finite it would be responsible for the resonant modes present in the dipole. On the other
hand the second term represents clearly an evanescent current. This second term can be easily obtained in closed form
using just a few exponentials by the GPOF method. The resulting evanecent current is


0 0
2 2
2 2 cos sin
( ) Im
i
kb
jkz i
i i
i i i i
P P b kz z kz e
I z j e a j a
k b jz k b z

= =

+


(4)

The current in (4) is pure imaginary and it is shown in Fig. 2. As can be seen from the figure this reactive current mode
has a peak at the ring location and a vanishing oscillatory behaviour that resembles very much the residue function
obtained numerically in Fig. 1. The current so obtained is what we call the source mode. The addition of this mode to
the characteristic mode series greatly improves its convergence as will be shown later.

FREQUENCY INDEPENDENT BASIS FUNCTIONS

As it has been stated before, one of the drawbacks to use characteristic modes as basis functions for the MoM
formulation is that characteristic modes vary with frequency. Fig. 3 illustrates the evolution with frequency of the first
radiating mode of a dipole of length l=0.5 m, and radius a=0.5mm, discretized in 100 segments. It can be observed that
although the current distribution of the mode is slightly modified for frequency points close to resonance (300MHz), the
oscillation of the mode grows as frequency increases. This variation in the current modes has to be taken into account to
get to accurate results, specially at the highest frequencies. Hence, characteristic modes need to be obtained and stored
at many frequencies. It would be very advantageous to obtain a set of basis functions that would not depend on
frequency and would comprise the behaviour of the characteristic modes in the hole frequency band. As proposed in [6]
the procedure suggested to generate this set of frequency independent characteristic modes (FICM) can be summarized
as follows:

1. Choose the number of characteristic modes, say M, to be used to expand the total current.
2. Calculate these M characteristic modes at N different frequencies over the frequency band.
3. Form a new matrix W, that needs not to be a square matrix, whose columns are the MxN modes obtained in
step 2, plus the source mode described in section 2 to accelerate convergence.
4. Then, apply singular value decomposition (SVD) to matrix W, to get a new matrix U of the same dimensions
as W. The columns of the new matrix U are orthonormal basis vectors that span the subspace formed by the
vector columns of W.
5. Take the columns of U with larger associated singular value, say P in number, to form the new set of
frequency independent basis functions.
6. Finally, use these P FICM at every frequency to get to a compressed MoM equation of dimension PxP that can
be solved by direct inversion.

RESULTS

For the sake of illustration, let us consider a square loop antenna of perimeter 0.916m, and wire radius 0.5mm. The
structure is fed in the middle of one of its sides by a delta gap generator. To perform the analysis the loop is divided into
48 segments. To illustrate first the problem of our concern, Figs. 4 and 5 show the total current and the aproximation
using just a few charasterictic modes for a one-wavelength square loop. As can be seen, the real part converges using
just the first mode (notice that the loop is tuned at its first resonance) while the imaginary part fails to converge and
eventually it even diverges. Now, let us carry out the improvements described in the preceding sections The number of
modes used to expand the total current is M=7. These M modes are numerically computed at N=6 frequency points over
the band of interest, 20MHz -1GHz. The 42 resultant modes plus the frequency independent source mode, are arranged
as column vectors to form matrix W of size 48x43. Next, SVD is applied to matrix W to get the new set of P=15
FICM. Fig.6 compares the input impedance computed using pulse basis functions, with our set of FICM. The quadratic
error for both the real and the imaginary parts of the input impedance keeps below 1% within the band of interest.

CONCLUSION

A new method for accelerating MoM computation is presented. This method is based on a new class of frequency
independent entire domain basis functions that are directly obtained from the characteristic modes defined by
Harrington and Mautz, [4]. Including a source mode to model the coupling between the feeding source and the structure
dramatically accelerates the convergence of the characteristic modes.

References

[1] E. Suter, and J.R. Mosig, A subdomain multilevel approach for the efficient MoM analysis of large planar
antennas, Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, vol. 26, no.4, pp. 270-277, August 2000.
[2] V. V. S. Prakash, and R. Mittra, Characteristic basis function method: A new technique for efficient solution of
method of moments matrix equations, Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, vol. 36, no.2, pp. 95-100,
January 2003.
[3] G. Angiulli, and G. Di Massa, Mutual coupling evaluation in microstrip arrays by characteristic modes, AP2000,
Davos, 2000.
[4] R. F. Harrington, and J. R. Mautz, Theory of characteristic modes for conducting bodies, IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propagat., vol. AP-19, no. 2, pp. 622-628, Sept. 1971.
[5] A. O. Yee, and R.J. Garbacz, Self- and mutual-admittances of wire antennas in terms of characteristic modes,
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-21,no. 6, pp. 868-871, Nov. 1973.
[6] V.V.S. Prakash, RCS computation over a frequency band using the characteristic basis and model order reduction
method, 2003 APS/URSI, Columbus-Ohio, June, 2003

z/
-0.250 -0.125 0.000 0.125 0.250
R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l

c
u
r
r
e
n
t
-0.10
-0.05
0.00
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
Fig 1. Residual current of a half-wavelength dipole
obtained after subtracting 5 characteristic modes from the
actual total current.

z /
-1.00 -0.75 -0.50 -0.25 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00
S
o
u
r
c
e

m
o
d
e

a
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e

(
A
m
p
s
)
-0.10
-0.05
0.00
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
Fig 2. Source mode for an infinite wire of radius a=0.05
fed by a magnetic ring of radius b=0.07.
Segments
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
J
1
-0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
200 MHz
400 MHz
600 MHz
800 MHz
1000 MHz
1400 MHz
1800 MHz
Fig 3. Mode evolution with frequency for the first mode
of a dipole of length l=0.5 m and radius a=0.5 mm.

Segments
0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48
I

(
m
A
)
-8
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
6
8
Re (I
total
)
Re (I
1 mode
)

Fig 4. Real part of the current in a one-wavelength
square loop.
Segments
6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48
I

(
m
A
)
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2
3
Im (I
total
)
Im (I
3 modes
)
Im (I
5 modes
)

Fig 5. Imaginary part of the current in a one-wavelength
square loop.
Frequency (MHz)
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Z
i
n

(
O
h
m
s
)
-3000
-2000
-1000
0
1000
2000
3000
R (pulse B.F.)
X (pulse B.F.)
R (15 FICM)
X (15 FICM)

Fig 6. Input impedance of a square loop (0.06-3 in
perimeter) computed using direct MoM computation
(pulse BF) and frequency independent characteristic
modes (FICM).