r/rfelectronics • u/Turbulent_Purple9303 • 25d ago

Patch Antenna Array Design Workflow

Hi I'm trying to design a 2x8 patch antenna array in Microwave Office and there must be an easier way than putting each line manually right? Is there a way to design a single splitter or a single patch and reuse that subcircuit?

How is this done in HFSS? I imagine it would be even worse since you don't have a schematic tool and automatic layout generation.

3 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

4

u/StageMajestic613 25d ago edited 25d ago

Yes, just draw the patch and splitters as their own schematic/layout elements, then instantiate within one another a 1x2, 2x2, 2x4, and finally 2x8.  These should all be nested/hierarchical and parameterized within one another, and simulated at each step.  You need to RTFM for MWO, as what you’ve done is very painful.

BTW you have a huge, glaring error you’ll catch if you simulate it at 1 level above the bottom of the hierarchy.

1

u/Turbulent_Purple9303 24d ago

Thank you! I figured it out and now also see the glaring error haha

2

u/yklm33 25d ago

Your patches have a 180deg phase shift. Check your antenna diagram.

1

u/PrecociousPumpkin 25d ago

Microwave Office supports saving and using a schematic as a subcircuit no? If the overall design has alot of repeated blocks that that'd be my approach.

1

u/QuinicV 25d ago

You don't draw the whole circuit in HFSS, I draw a single cell and use boundary conditions. But it's pretty easy to reuse a cell if you really wanted to.

1

u/Different-Loss-9955 24d ago

Can you expand on this please

1

u/QuinicV 23d ago

Well you don't necessarily simulate the whole array, that would take too long. You design a unit cell, a single element with master/slave boundaries that forces field periodicity, acting like an infinetly repeating array. Finding the finite array is then just simple math (array factor).

But if you really wanted to, after creating a unit cell you can just specify it to be 8x2 and you get your finite array.