A Dimension Estimation Method for Rigid and Flexible Planar Antennas Based on Characteristic Mode Analysis

Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper introduces an estimation approach to patch antenna dimensions. The idea is clearly presented, and it has practical appliactions. There are some minor factors the authors need to considerate.
1. Fig. 2 is too large.
2. You can also apply different colors for different curves in Fig. 3, and Fig. 4.
3. The Plots in Fig. 5 are not clear.
4. You can use percentage in Table 4 ,Table 5, and Table 6 to represent the delta error.
5. The text fonts from all the figures are different. Can you change it to a uniform font? You can also use the same decimal digital number to represent a certain parameter.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript proposes a new approach for designing flexible planar antennas using characteristic mode analysis. The manuscript may be of interest to the engineers and its novelty is beyond doubt. However, some revision of the manuscript is still required. Pay attention to my comments written below.
1. The number of references is not sufficient.
2. A perusal of the manuscript is required in order to correct miswriting. For example, Eq.(3) is written incorrectly, the reference in the caption of Fig. 1 is incorrect.
3. The use of [15] is not suitable, since the formulas of this work are doubtful and not confirmed by anything.
4. Instead of describing the results of [15], maybe more attention should be paid to the use of Eq.(6) proposed in [17].
5. As far as I understand, the use of the proposed approach leads to antenna designs with an additional operating frequency, an improvement in the antenna gain and a significant improvement in its matching at resonant frequencies. All this should be clearly reflected in the conclusions. This will improve the value of the article. Thus, the conclusions must be rewritten.
6. To be honest, it is hard to imagine that the proposed antenna prototype could be implemented in the flexible electronics industry: the antenna is too big with a patch of complicate shape.
Thus, my decision is accept with minor revisions.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Reviewer 3 Report
This work reports an empirical method to quick estimation of patch antennas dimensions on different substrates based on characteristic mode analysis (CMA). This method involves generating formulas to calculate substrate-independent patch widths of antennas by substituting the width of the patch produced from the antenna’s characteristic angle, further enabling the definition of a relationship between the characteristic angle and the natural resonant frequency of an antenna structure, bridging the changes of resonant frequencies contributed by possible variation in substrate properties. The manuscript is well written and data presented is reasonable, so I think it can be published after minor revisions as below:
1. There are some grammatical mistakes in the abstract as well as in the main text. Please check it carefully.
2. In Figure 22, there is a difference between the simulated and measured reflection coefficients for the antenna prototype. It is better to make an explanation here.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.doc