A new formula for the evaluation of the modal radiation Q factor is derived. The total Q of selected structures is to be calculated from the set of eigenmodes with associated eigen-energies and eigen-powers. Thanks to the analytical expression of these quantities, the procedure is highly accurate, respecting arbitrary current densities flowing along the radiating device. The electric field integral equation, Delaunay triangulation, method of moments, Rao-Wilton-Glisson basis function and the theory of characteristic modes constitute the underlying theoretical background. In terms of the modal radiation Q, all necessary relations are presented and the essential points of implementation are discussed. Calculation of the modal energies and Q factors enable us to study the effect of the radiating shape separately to the feeding. This approach can be very helpful in antenna design. A few examples are given, including a thin-strip dipole, two coupled dipoles a bowtie antenna and an electrically small meander folded dipole. Results are compared with prior estimates and some observations are discussed. Good agreement is observed for different methods.

New expressions are derived to calculate the Q factor of a radiating device. The resulting relations link Q based on the frequency change of the input impedance at the input port (Qx, Qz) with expressions based solely on the current distribution on an radiating device. The question of which energies of a radiating system are observable is reviewed, and then the proposed Q factor as defined in this paper is physical. The derivation is based on potential theory rather than fields. This approach hence automatically eliminates all divergent integrals associated with electromagnetic energies in infinite space. The new formulas allow us to study the radiation Q factor for antennas without feeding (through e.g. Characteristic Modes) as well as fed by an arbitrary number of ports. The new technique can easily be implemented in any numerical software dealing with current densities. To present the merits of proposed technique, three canonical antennas are studied. Numerical examples show excellent agreement between the measurable Qz derived from input impedance and the new expressions.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, full paper (IEEE TAP

Abstract-A new method for tracking characteristic numbers and vectors appearing in the Characteristic Mode Theory is presented in this paper. The challenge here is that the spectral decomposition of the moment impedance-matrix doesn't always produce well ordered eigenmodes. This issue is addressed particularly to finite numerical accuracy and slight nonsymmetry of the frequencydependent matrix. At specific frequencies, the decomposition problem might be ill-posed and non-uniquely defined as well. Hence an advanced tracking procedure has been developed to deal with noisy modes, non-continuous behavior of eigenvalues, mode swapping etc. Proposed method has been successfully implemented into our in-house Characteristic Mode software tool for the design of microstrip patch antennas and tested for some interesting examples.

Aspects of the theory of characteristic modes, based on their variational formulation, are presented and an explicit form of a related functional, involving only currents in a spatial domain, is derived. The new formulation leads to deeper insight into the modal behavior of radiating structures as demonstrated by a detailed analysis of three canonical structures: a dipole, an array of two dipoles and a loop, cylinder and a sphere. It is demonstrated that knowledge of the analytical functional can be utilized to solve important problems related to the theory of characteristic modes decomposition such as the resonance of inductive modes or the benchmarking of method of moments code.

In this letter, we present an investigation of the radiation -factors of two coupled thin dipole antennas with sinusoidal current distribution. The approach is based on novel rigorous equations for radiated power and stored energies recently derived by Vandenbosch. First, we study the validity of the used thin-wire approximation with a reduced kernel. Good agreement between the assumed sinusoidal current distribution and the real cylindrical antenna modeled with the full-wave method of moments (MoM) is observed. Then, radiation -factors are evaluated for half-wave side-by-side coupled dipole antennas with different feeding configurations. It is found that every such combination of studied coupled dipoles presents minimum for specific feeding arrangement and separation distance.