The use of curved segments for numerically modeling thin wire antennas and scatterers

Modeling wire structures with a high degree of curvature generally requires a large number of piecewise linear segments to accurately represent rapid geometrical variations. In order to reduce the number of segments required to model curved wire structures, a method of moments formulation using curved wire segments is presented. Specifically, piecewise quadratic wire segments are used to discretize the wire geometry. This algorithm is used to analyze a small wire loop antenna and a multiple-arm Archimedian spiral antenna. For each example, a comparison is made between results obtained using this quadratic segment algorithm and a linear segment algorithm. These examples demonstrate that the memory required is significantly reduced and a reduction in the solution time is achieved when quadratic segments are used.