Custom Geometry and PCB Fabrication

Shapes and boolean operations, custom mesh and geometry, multiport antennas, printed circuit board (PCB) stack, Gerber file generation

Create your own customized 2-D and 3-D antenna geometry or import a 2-D array mesh. Define the feed for this arbitrary element and analyze the antenna or array by using analysis functions. Create and combine geometric shapes for PCB antennas. Select PCB antenna connectors and manufacturing services. Write Gerber files for PCB antenna manufacturing.

You can also use PCB Antenna Designer app to design, analyze, and export single or multi-feed PCB antennas.

Featured Examples

Design and Analyze Perforated Horn Antenna for RF Applications

Design a perforated horn antenna suited for RF applications using custom geometry features of the Antenna Toolbox™ and analyze its scattering parameters. By following this guide, you will learn how to construct the antenna structure step by step, including the waveguide, horn taper, side grids, back grids, top and bottom grids, and finally, integrate feed mechanisms. This example is particularly useful for engineers and researchers focused on antenna design for high-frequency applications.

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Train Machine Learning Model for Analysis of Custom Antenna

Demonstrates how to apply machine learning to antenna analysis, and it illustrates a general recipe that you can use to train machine learning models to characterize antenna structures modeled and simulated in Antenna Toolbox™.

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Design And Analyze Spherically Capped Biconical Antenna

Model and analyze a spherically capped biconical antenna using custom 3-D shapes. This antenna is a canonical broadband radiator used in practical ultra-wide-band communication systems. [1] The two cones of the antenna are connected by a cylindrical delta gap feed. The height and diameter of the cylindrical feed are equal. The location of the feed is chosen in between the two cone apex points as the gap between them can be considered as infinitesimally small, which nearly resembles an ideal antenna. Later, the effect of feed dimensions variation and mesh density variation near the delta gap is studied by comparing the antenna input impedance for two different feed diameters and mesh density. The antenna is analyzed in the frequency range of 900MHz to 15GHz.

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Analysis of Ultrawideband Trident Inset-Fed Monopole Antenna with Conical Ground

Analyze the performance of a U-shaped monopole antenna designed on a PCB and mounted on a conical ground. You achieve low-frequency matching by inserting a trident inset feed. The conical ground with an elliptical shape at the base of the radiator outperforms traditional UWB monopole designs in impedance-matching bandwidth and radiation pattern omnidirectivity [1].

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Design and Analysis of Diamond-Shaped PCB Antenna for Ultra-Wideband Applications

Create the diamond-shaped ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna described in [1] with a modified ground plane. It analyzes this antenna over an ultra-wide frequency range of 100 MHz to 15 GHz. UWB antennas are in high demand for various applications, such as wireless communications, medical imaging, radar, and indoor positioning. This demand is due to their ability to enable a high data transmission rate and low power consumption.

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Design Series-Fed Patch Antenna Array for 5G Base Station

Design and analyze a series fed patch antenna array at 28 GHz. The array has 64 antenna elements arranged in 8-by-8 configuration and is used as a 5G mobile base station antenna at 28 GHz. The phased array steers its beam along the horizontal axis to provide coverage in different directions.

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PCB Antenna for USB Dongle and BLE Applications

Design and analyze a PCB antenna for USB dongle and BLE applications at 2.4 GHz.

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Miniaturize Patch Antennas Using Metamaterial-Inspired Technique

Design a miniaturized patch antenna at 2.4 GHz with a complementary split-ring resonator (CSRR) loading plane and evaluate its performance, with results as published in [1]. The antenna is miniaturized by shrinking its circular patch structure from the original radius of 23.1 mm to 6 mm.

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Design and Analysis of Compact Ultra-Wideband MIMO Antenna Array

Design and analyze a compact ultra-wideband (UWB) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna array presented in [1]. The American Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed commercial use in the 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz frequency range starting from 2002. Since then, researchers have worked to develop antenna technology for this ultra wide frequency range. The main challenge in designing a UWB antenna with such a wide bandwidth is the multipath fading. A popular solution to overcome this fading effect is to use MIMO antenna array technology, which also increases the channel capacity of UWB systems.

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Design and Analysis Using PCB Antenna Designer

Design, validate, analyze, and export 1-by-2 H-notch linear antenna array.

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Create Antenna Model from Gerber Files

Create an antenna model from Gerber files and subsequently analyze the antenna. The Gerber file format is used in printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing and is defined in the RS-274X standard which is the newer extended Gerber format. The Antenna Toolbox™ supports the newer RS-274X format both to generate Gerber files from an antenna model as well as to create an antenna model from a set of Gerber files.

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Import and Analyze Custom 3-D Antenna Geometry

Simulate a 3-D custom antenna geometry from an STL (stereolithography) file. To simulate a 3-D custom antenna geometry, use the customAntennaStl object. This object allows the user to simulate a custom 3-D geometry from an *.stl file. An STL file is a tessellation of a structure in 3-D space using triangles.

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Antenna Model Generation and Full-Wave Analysis From Photo

Demonstrates the process of using a photograph of a planar antenna to generate a viable antenna model and its subsequent analysis for port, surface and field characteristics. The Image Segmenter app is used to perform segmentation on the image of an RFID tag, and the resulting boundaries are used to set up the antenna model in Antenna Toolbox™. An initial impedance analysis is done over a frequency range to understand the port characteristics of the antenna. After determining the resonant frequency, the current and far-field pattern are calculated and plotted.

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Model and Analyze Planar Photonic Band Gap Structure

Create and analyze microwave planar Photonic Band Gap (PBG) structures using Antenna Toolbox™. Photonic Band Gap structures consist of a periodic lattice which provides effective and flexible control of the Electromagnetic wave propagation in one or multiple directions. Microwave planar PBG structures were first introduced around the year 2000 by Prof. Itoh and his group. These structures create a stop band over a certain frequency range and are easy to implement by cutting periodic patterns on the metal ground plane.

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Modeling and Analysis of Probe-Fed Stacked Patch Antenna

The steps to model and analyze a probe-fed stacked patch antenna. The standard rectangular microstrip patch antenna has a narrow impedance bandwidth typically less than 5%. The stacked patch configuration is one of the ways of increasing the impedance bandwidth of these antennas to be greater than 25% [1]. There are different ways of designing stacked patches, primarily differing in the way their feed is designed [2]. The two types of feeding mechanisms are probe-feed and aperture coupled. These two mechanisms have a role in the impedance bandwidth behavior as well as the radiation characteristics of the antenna.

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Model and Analyze Dual Polarized Patch Microstrip Antenna

Design and measure a wideband dual polarized microstrip antenna that finds its use at the base station of a cellular system. In order to achieve the wideband characteristics, this design considers a slot coupled patch antenna structure.

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Design 77 GHz Patch Microstrip for Automotive Radar Receiver

Create, model, and analyze an inset-fed patch microstrip antenna at high frequencies. As the frequency of operation increases to millimeter waves, the antenna sizes decrease and the antennas are fabricated on printed circuit boards (PCBs). Such printed antennas are of light weight, are inexpensive, easy to integrate, and are widely used as components in a radar. The antenna designed in this example operates at a frequency of 77 GHz and is used in an automotive radar receiver.

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Custom Geometry and PCB Fabrication

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