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Model Setup
Waveport Feed
Meshing
Analysis/Sweep Setup
Plotting Results
Model Setup
First the model of the microstrip patch antenna has to be drawn in HFSS. It consists of
rectangular substrate and the metal trace layer as shown in Fig. 1. Note that a quarter-wave
length transformer was used to match the patch to a 50 Ohm feed line. The dimensions of
antenna can be found in the HFSS simulation file.
Waveport Setup
In order to excite the structure an excitation source has to be chosen. For this simulation a
waveport will be used. The waveport will excite the first mode of the microstrip line (quasiTEM) and then HFSS will use this field to excite the entire structure. In order to get an accurate
result, the waveport has to be defined properly; if it is too small the field will be truncated
(characteristic impedance will be incorrectly calculated) and if it is too large a waveguide mode
may appear. Please refer to the tutorial on defining a waveport for further information. Since the
substrate height is 1.57 mm and the feed line width is 4.84 mm, the waveport size chosen is 5
mm high by 50 mm wide. After the waveport rectangle is drawn, the WAVEPORT excitation was
assigned to it. In the Analysis section of this tutorial, it will be shown that this waveport size
accurately models the desired microstrip mode.
frequency should line within the frequency sweep range and around the passband (i.e, around 2.4
GHz). In addition, the field data is saved for each frequency point in the sweep; field data needs
to be saved in order to do any field post-processing.
Before running the simulation, an additional Solution Setup was added with Solve Ports Only to
verify the waveport setup. This Port Only Setup was run and the resulting port mode is shown in
Fig. 4; a characteristic impedance of 50.7 Ohms was obtained.
From Fig. 5, the fundamental resonance of the antenna occurs at 2.36 GHz with a return loss of
-29.43 dB. Next, the top face of the substrate was selected and the Electric Field Vector was
plotted for 2.36 GHz. The field plot is shown in Fig. 6 and shows the expected half-wavelength
field distribution.
To plot the far-field patterns of the antenna, a far-field setup has to be created. Two will created;
one for the E- and H-Plane two-dimensional patterns and another for the three-dimensional
pattern. To create each far-field setup go to HFSS>Radiation>Insert Far-Field Setup>Infinite
Sphere. For the two-dimensional pattern, the default values have to be changed; Phi should start
at 0 deg and stop at 90 deg with a 90 deg step size. For the three-dimensional pattern, the default
values can be used. Fig. 7 shows the two-dimensional patterns and Fig. 8 shows the threedimensional patterns. To obtain the radiation efficiency, peak gain, etc. go to
HFSS>Radiation>Compute Antenna/Max Param and choose 2.36 GHz as the frequency of
interest.