Antenna Modeling and Simulation Techniques
Altair EmployeeNow-a-days antennas have become an integral and important part of almost any wireless communication system. In the field of antenna engineering, theoretical analysis is of paramount importance in understanding the basics of the antenna radiation characteristics. While the basic concept of antennas is well known, closed form, exact analytical solutions to many antenna problems are not practical and impossible in many cases. Advances in electromagnetic (EM) simulations have significantly impacted the antenna design process by providing exact solutions by solving Maxwell’s equations using numerical methods. Altair Feko is used to design a very wide range of antenna types, including wire antennas, microstrip, horn, aperture, lenses, reflector, and conformal antennas.
Antenna simulation methods can be broadly categorized into full-wave and asymptotic solutions. Full wave solutions solve Maxwell Equations accurately and provide reliable results provided a good CAD model and mesh is available. Asymptotic solutions also solve Maxwell Equations, but with appropriate assumptions and approximations. They also can provide reasonably accurate results, provided the approximations and assumptions are properly considered during the simulation process.
Full wave solutions include: Method of Moments (MoM), Multilevel Fast Multipole Method (MLFMM), Finite Element Method (FEM), Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) etc. Asymptotic Solutions include: Physical Optics (PO), Ray Lunching Geometrical Optics (RL-GO) (also known as Shooting and Bouncing Ray – SBR method), Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD) etc. While full wave solutions are accurate, they are computationally expensive when applied to electrically large structures. While asymptotic solutions may provide an alternative, they may not be suitable for modeling complex antenna geometries.
Hybrid solutions that combine, both full wave and asymptotic solutions can facilitate simulation of airborne antenna problems with less computational resources, but at the same time providing required accuracy. Feko incorporates various hybrid solutions that combine, FEM/MoM/MLFMM, MoM/PO, MLFMM/PO, MoM/RL-GO and MoM/UTD, which allows for efficient analysis of broad spectrum of EM problems as illustrated in the info graphic below.
Various antenna examples using different simulation methods in Feko are shown below.
You can review the video below to learn more about antenna modeling and simulation methods in Feko.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfqb7brK_X4