Getting Ahead with Antenna Array Design and Simulation

An antenna array allows us to achieve high gain with multiple radiating elements and a phased array in addition offers the possibility to shape and steer the beam without changing the array geometry. Traditionally such arrays have been used in defense applications, particularly for radar, but this is changing as we see increased commercial use, especially with the advent of on-the-move access to high bandwidth data. The challenge lies in achieving these radiating characteristics while keeping the undesired effects such as the mutual coupling between the elements due to their proximity to each other at a minimum. The design of these large arrays is typically achieved in two steps where first the element design is obtained by optimizing the Active Element Impedance and Active Element Pattern over all frequencies and scan angles and in the second step the array design is validated by inspecting the real scanning behavior and including the non-periodic structure effects. Each of these stages call for appropriate solver technologies to complete the design efficiently in the least amount of time. During this webinar we will look at the new array design functionality which makes the design of phased arrays, at both the cell and full array level substantially more efficient and powerful.