How Does Current Behave as a Wave in RF Engineering and Patch Antennas?

I am currently studying electromagnetism, and I have to write a report on patch antenna's, but before I even get started on that I wanted to fully understand what it means when talking about currents as waves.

I keep coming across terms like "reflected power" which supposed to be the power of the wave that is reflected. This makes absolutely no sense to me what so ever.
I'm also currently revising what I learnt in A level physics about waves. I have a feeling that standing waves are important in this topic.

I currently view power flowing through a conductor as a net flow of charge per second in one direction multiplied by the potential difference causing the flow of charge. This can be DC or AC. I also understand that In AC the current and voltage as a function of time will be graphed as a sin wave.

However I do not think this "wave" is the wave's that are talked about in RF Engineering, as this is not an actual longitudinal or transverse wave, this is just the voltage and current at any point in time. This wave can not be reflected, or become a standing wave, as it is not an actual wave. Or is it?

Can someone please explain what RF engineers mean when they talk about waves inside conductors?

Thank you!

Just a couple of thoughts to get you started:

Iimagine a pressure wave, like a sound wave, being reflected from the closed end of a tube it is travelling down.
The sound is the changing density of the air. The reflection is an echo which will go back through the original sound.

A sound wave in a closed box will continuously reverberate (echo) until it runs out of steam.
(Pardon steam , showing my age !-)

Now see an similar wave of increased electron density (or electron pressure) travelling along a conductor at c, and being reflected from the end in the same way.

For electromagnetic waves through vacuum or down a waveguide, probably the same principle but with waves of just energy density.

Does that help at all ? (I'm not sure if that agrees with the official theory, but that's how it looks to my mind.)

Wikipedia has some animations which might help on "Standing Wave".

(Just for interest, I see power as an ongoing transfer/conversion of energy.)

Yes this has helped loads. I really hope that the official theory is that it is a wave of increased electron density, as I can visualise this. However I am sceptical, as I would have thought that there would be more sources on the internet verifying this.

I can accept that the electric field propagates through the conductor as a wave, as it has a finite propagation speed so it cant change at all places at the same time. Visualising the current is much more difficult but this electron density wave theory solve's this problem. I like this theory, thank you for answering.