Affiliated with the
Communication & Space
Sciences Laboratory

Fractal Antenna Engineering

Fractal - A rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole. Fractals are generally self-similar and independent of scale.

  • Born out of a search for order in the disorder of life (biology, economics, physics, etc.)
  • The term fractal was originally coined by Benoit Mandelbrot in 1975
  • Fractals have found wide-spread practical application in many fields of mathematics, physics, and engineering
  • Members of CEARL are actively involved in developing new designs for antenna elements as well as array configurations that exploit properties of fractals. We call this relatively new and innovative area of research Fractal Antenna Engineering
 


..: References :..

1-) An Overview of Fractal Antenna Engineering Research
by D. H. Werner and Suman Ganguly

ABSTRACT: Recent efforts by several researchers around the world to combine fractal geometry with electromagnetic theory have led to a plethora of new and innovative antenna designs. In this report, we provide a comprehensive overview of recent developments in the rapidly growing field of fractal antenna engineering. Fractal antenna engineering research has been primarily focused in two areas: the first deals with the analysis and design of fractal antenna elements, and the second concerns the application of fractal concepts to the design of antenna arrays. Fractals have no characteristic size, and are generally composed of many copies of themselves at different scales. These unique properties of fractals have been exploited in order to develop a new class of antenna-element designs that are multi-band and/or compact in size. On the other hand, fractal arrays are a subset of thinned arrays, and have been shown to posses several highly desirable properties, including multiband performance, low sidelobe levels, and the ability to develop rapid beamfroming algorithms based on the recursive nature of fractals. Fractal elements and arrays are also ideal candidates for use in reconfigurable systems. Finally, we will provide a brief summary of recent work in the related area of fractal frequency-selective surfaces.



2-) Useful Fractal Antenna Engineering References
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3-) Additional Useful References

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