Getting antenna design right can be tricker than it sounds. Small geometry changes can have a huge effect on realized gain and on the farfield lobe. From our experience, manoufacturing techniques have an equally large impact. If the antenna isnt built exactly how it is designed, then it wont perform as expected.

Electromagnetic Consultants has over a decade of experience in antenna design and quick prototyping. Lets take a walk through a simple helical antenna example:

To begin the antenna dimensions are first calculated by hand. CST can import designs from the antenna design tool called 'Antenna Mangus', which can be purchased at additional cost for complex designs. Material properties are then assigned to individual components to represent their structure. The design of the import feed is critical to the performance of the antenna, and can be customized for its specific connector, whether BNC, type-N, SMA, or TNC. The gemotry of the input port was modeled after a Type-N connector. Its dimensions were calculated using a relative permitivity of 3 and a permeability of 1 for the connector dielectric substrate that exists between the inner conductor labeled 1 and the gray outter ground plane.

The antenna can be excited with any custom excitation signal. In this specific case we are using a wideband gaussian pulse. The antenna was designed for a center frequency of 2.4GHz and was simulated from 2.0GHz to 2.8GHz to characterize its wideband properties. The antenna was simulated in infinite freespace with an impedance of 377ohms.

The above is the final 3D plot of the antenna's realized gain. Results can be viewed in many forms, and can be presented to the customer in ways to effectively communicate the antennas performance. Give us a call and let us quickly validate your design, or reccomend design changes.