Analyzing And Designing Integrated Antennas in Wireless Systems

Wireless systems are now ubiquitous in sensing, communication, and computing applications.  These range from high-end, high-cost, high-power RF MIMO systems to low-cost analog sensors with integrated low-cost antennas. Design, analysis, and verification of such systems are challenging on a variety of fronts.

These systems tend to be complex! Multiple radios may exist with interference between each of them, and with antennas playing multiple roles. These systems naturally function at high frequencies, implying that there are significant full-wave effects, multiple resonances, and strong environmental effects. Antenna patterns, near field behavior, and impedances and bandwidth are also strongly dependent on interactions with the antenna environment. In embedded systems and integrated antennas, close coupling with circuit boards and components can strongly impact these. Multiple file formats for 3d sections, and designs from manufacturing layouts, drawing layouts, and package and board layout tools all need to be integrated into a 3d model for electromagnetic analysis. The EM tool of choice has to handle these complexities, scale, and heteregenous system effects!Most commercial tools either have the scale without the accuracy or needed 3D ability, or can do 3D simulation of very simple structures. See the application snippet on integrated antennas that describes this further and shows how PhysWAVE can handle these challenges.