Yashu
Electrical
- Sep 12, 2004
- 54
I'm new to patch antenna design. I'm trying to find out the best software to design 900 MHz F antenna's as well as some rectangular patches in 900 & 2.4G ISM bands.
I downloaded (free) Sonnet and tried a 2.4 GHz patch design with it. It's 37.1x28.9mm with coax feed at 18.5 and 7.1mm. It's on FR4 with er=4.48 and 1.6mm thick. Gnd plane is 100mm square.
After simulation, I see that the return loss peaks at a lower freq (2.38G) than expected (2.44G). So, I start to shave off the "L" length 0.1mm at a time and see the peak moving up. However, magically, at a certain point, this peak jumps about 50MHz even though I'm still shaving in 0.1mm decrements.
Is this a problem with the (free) Sonnet simulator?
How accurate are these simulators? Must I know the intricate details of RF antenna design in order to config the simulation parametrics?
What's the best software to purchase? Right now I'd like to pay minimal ($1K range) because I'm doing just rect patches... but, eventually will start doing smaller form factors and hopefully will have more cash to invest.
Thanks for any help.
I downloaded (free) Sonnet and tried a 2.4 GHz patch design with it. It's 37.1x28.9mm with coax feed at 18.5 and 7.1mm. It's on FR4 with er=4.48 and 1.6mm thick. Gnd plane is 100mm square.
After simulation, I see that the return loss peaks at a lower freq (2.38G) than expected (2.44G). So, I start to shave off the "L" length 0.1mm at a time and see the peak moving up. However, magically, at a certain point, this peak jumps about 50MHz even though I'm still shaving in 0.1mm decrements.
Is this a problem with the (free) Sonnet simulator?
How accurate are these simulators? Must I know the intricate details of RF antenna design in order to config the simulation parametrics?
What's the best software to purchase? Right now I'd like to pay minimal ($1K range) because I'm doing just rect patches... but, eventually will start doing smaller form factors and hopefully will have more cash to invest.
Thanks for any help.
