n
Electrical field of the total array by:
Etotal (er ) Esingle(er ) AF (er ) f corr
= . . f corr
Note: The pattern multiplication rule only applies for an array consisting of identical
elements.
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Antenna Array Examples
Ready-to-simulate antenna arrays are available here:
Online Help ->
Examples and Tutorials
CST MWS Examples Transient Analysis Examples
Antennas Overview
For more information about antenna simulation please refer to the Application Note
„Antenna Simulation“ in the support area.
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Array design approach
Large arrays can be approximated by multiplying the Active Element Pattern by the Array
Factor since the interior elements will have the same (or very similar!) radiation pattern as
the Active Element Pattern Use infinite array approach as starting point.
Small arrays consist mostly of edge elements which causes this approach to be inaccurate.
Each element has a different radiation pattern All elements need to be simulated.
Interior elements
Interior elements
Array Factor
tan 1 E TM
A00
2 cos 2
Act. Elem. Pattern TE
A00 S Zmax
TE 00
,1
cos
2
TE A00
TE
TM
A00 S Zmax
TM 00
,1
cos
2
TM A00 TE S Zmax
TM TE 00
,1
Total A00 TM 2
cos TM S Zmax
2
TE
A00 TM 00
,1
Scan Blindness
At this point, multiplying by the Array Factor will yield a nice approximation of how the large,
but finite, array will perform.
The validity of this approximation can be checked by creating a finite array and exciting the
center element.
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Active Element Pattern
Near Field representation
Array Factor
Main lobe steered to 0° Main lobe steered to 30° Main lobe steered to 45°
25 x 25
Array Factor
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Farfield Array
The Farfield Array feature can be automatically applied using the Template Based
Postprocessing engine.
This can be quite useful for quick optimization of array performance after simulating only
one element.
1) 2)
.
.
Port 3
……
……
Port 22
For more information about High Performance Compunting inside CST STUDIO SUITE
please refer to the a specific section of the Help On-Line Simulation Acceleration
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Sim. Excitation v. Comb. Results
Both of these approaches can yield the exact same results but the most appropriate choice
depends on the situation.
In general, it is best to use Simultaneous Excitation when the number of ports and modes is
greater than the number of desired excitation setting combinations.
This determination becomes more complicated when Acceleration options (Distributed
Computing, MPI, and GPU Computing) are considered.
360 f
d x xsin cos d y sin sin
c
f frequency
c speed of light
d x element spacing in the x-direction
d y element spacing in the y-direction
x row offset (non-rectangular lattice)
beam steering angle along theta axis
beam steering angle along phi axis
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Beam Steering
Below is an example of this calculation with a 90 degree lattice and 14.99 mm
element spacing at 10 GHz steering the beam to q = 45 degrees.
36010e9
0.01499 0sin 45cos0 0 sin 45sin 0 127.2824
2.9979e8
Thus, each element in the first row will have a progressive phase shift of -127.2824°.
For the second row, the dy term changes as shown below:
0 sin45sin0 0.01499 sin45sin0
The phase values for various excitations can be seen in the Simultaneous Excitation and
Combine Results dialogs on the previous slides.
For arrays with many ports, entering all the values in these dialogs can be cumbersome.
The CST Array Wizard is helpful for this.
360
Phase Quantization Step
2NP
N P Number of Phase bits
Quantization
lobes
Maximum Attenuation 2 NA
1 LSB
N A Number of Amplitude bits no phase bits 4 phase bits
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Pattern Synthesis
The Excitation Settings of the CST Array Wizard allows some common pattern synthesis
techniques to be implemented and fill in the Farfield Array, Simultaneous Excitation, and
Combine Results dialogs automatically.
Pattern synthesis can be thought of as laying a spatial filter over the aperture of the array
and then sampling the values.
Example. A linear array with a triangular amplitude distribution shown below. The excitation
for the center element would have an amplitude of 1 and taper linearly down to zero as you
progress away from the center element.
1
Amplitude
Binomial
Cosine
Cosine^2
Chebyshev
Taylor
User Defined
am x
N 1! N number of linear array elements
Binomial:
m!N 1 m ! m 0,1, ..., N 1
ax
I 0 B x distance from the center of the array k 0 k!2
B parameter to set the relative sidelobe level
Since Bessel functions are not a standard VBA function, the equivalent summation shown to
the right is used and truncated when the remaining terms are less than 1e-9.
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Beamforming Networks
Beamforming Networks come in a variety of implementations.
Fixed beamforming techniques produce a particular beam shape that does not change and
thus can be implemented with passive hardware.
Adaptive beamforming techniques continuously change the beam shape to achieve a
particular result. For example, the beamforming network might be changed to obtain a
cleaner received signal (steer the beam) or to filter out an unwanted signal (place a null
at a particular direction). The operating principle of several common fixed beamforming
techniques are described in the slides that follow.
22.5°
67.5°
Array ports
Beam ports
The Dummy ports are typically intended to be
match terminated to minimize reflections and
are sometimes replaced with absorbing Lens region
material.
It can be realized in a variety of technologies
including microstrip, stripline, and
waveguide.
An excitation at one of the beam ports will
result in a particular phase distribution across
the array ports (which feed the antenna
elements). Thus, each beam port will create
a unique beam in the farfield pattern. Dummy ports
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Beam Shape Optimization
Optimizing the beam shape is possible using Combine Results and the Diversity Gain and
Correlation (from farfield) result templates.
This may be desired for a variety of reasons, for example, if designing a satellite, one
might want the main beam of the radiation pattern to only cover a particular country.
Parameters for
amplitude weights
Parameters for
amplitude weights
Initial beam shape Achieved beam shape
= +
14 hours 7 hours
Cassegrain reflector
Horn fed Cassegrain antenna with farfield
reflector antenna source