Get Started with Antenna Toolbox
Antenna Toolbox™ provides functions and apps for designing, analyzing, and visualizing antenna elements and arrays. You can design standalone antennas and build arrays of antennas using predefined elements with parameterized geometry and material.
The toolbox offers full-wave and hybrid electromagnetic solvers for port, surface, and field analysis, antenna placement studies, and radar cross section (RCS) calculations. You can install the antennas on large platforms such as vehicles or aircraft and analyze the effects of the structure on antenna performance. The toolbox includes AI-driven workflows such as reconstructing 3D radiation patterns using deep learning and enhancing antenna designs with SADEA optimization.
The toolbox lets you export designed antennas for fabrication using CAD and Gerber files. You can also integrate antenna arrays—including measured or third-party simulated data—into RF front ends of wireless systems for designing matching networks and simulating beamforming algorithms. You can use different propagation techniques, such as ray tracing, to visualize coverage and estimate links on arbitrary terrains and in urban scenarios.
Tutorials
- Design and Analysis Using Antenna Designer
Interactively construct, analyze and export antenna using Antenna Designer app. - Design and Analysis Using Antenna Array Designer
Interactively create and analyze antenna arrays using Antenna Array Designer app. - Design and Analysis Using PCB Antenna Designer
Design, validate, analyze, and export 1-by-2 H-notch linear antenna array.
- Antenna Modeling and Analysis
Construct, visualize and analyze antenna elements. - Array Modeling and Analysis
Construct, visualize, and analyze an antenna array. - Interact with Polar Plot
Use the interactivity features of a polar plot. - RF Propagation and Visualization
Visualize coverage maps, SINR maps, and propagation paths in outdoor and indoor environments.
Apps
Modeling, Analysis, and Visualization
More About
- Port Analysis
Input impedance, resonance, return loss, reflection coefficient, efficiency, bandwidth. - Surface Analysis
Charge distribution, current distribution. - Field Analysis
Radiation pattern, E-H fields, beamwidth, polarization, axial ratio. - Far-field Terminologies
Antenna directivity, gain and realized gain. - Mutual Coupling
Active or scan impedance, array factor and pattern multiplication, coupling matrix, isolated or embedded element pattern. - Correlation Coefficient
Far-field radiation pattern, S-parameter characterization. - Beamforming
Side lobe control, beam scanning. - Grating Lobes
Grating lobes are the maxima of the main beam, as predicted by the pattern multiplication theorem. - Antenna Classification
Classify antennas based on radiation pattern or feeding mechanism. - Antenna Toolbox Coordinate System
Rectangular and spherical coordinate system. - Antenna Radiation Patterns
Default radiation patterns of built-in antennas. - Feed Model
Antenna Toolbox feed model. - Meshing
Method of Moments (MoM) is a numerical method that transforms Maxwell’s continuous integral equations into an approximate discrete formulation that requires inversion of a large matrix. - Solvers
Different types of solvers, solver applications.
Fundamental Analysis of Antennas
Array Analysis
Antenna Modeling
Featured Examples
Port Analysis of Antenna
Quantifies terminal antenna parameters, with regard to the antenna port. The antenna is a one-port network. The antenna port is a physical location on the antenna where an RF source is connected to it. The terminal port parameters supported in Antenna Toolbox™ are
Current Visualization on Antenna Surface
Visualize surface currents on the half-wavelength dipole and how to observe the individual current components. Finally, it shows how to interact with the color bar to change its dynamic range to better visualize the surface currents.
Antenna Far-Field Visualization
Visualize the far fields for antennas and antenna arrays. Radiation patterns can be plotted in Antenna Toolbox™ using the pattern function. The example explains different options available in the pattern function.
Antenna Near-Field Visualization
Calculate and visualize the near-fields for antennas. Near fields can be plotted in Antenna Toolbox™ using the EHfields function. This function can also be used to calculate and plot the near-fields for antenna arrays. In the near field region, the electric and magnetic fields can exist independently of each other, and one type of field can dominate the other.
Field Analysis of Monopole Antenna
Conduct the field analysis of monopole antenna using pattern function.
Infinite Array Analysis
The use of infinite array analysis to model the behavior of a single element embedded in the array.
Plane Wave Excitation - Scattering Solution
Explains how to excite an antenna using a plane wave. The antenna in this case can be thought of as a receiving antenna. A receiving antenna may be viewed as any metal object that scatters an incident electromagnetic field. As a result of scattering an electric current appears on the antenna's surface. The current in turn creates a corresponding electric field. This produces a voltage difference across the feed. This voltage constitutes the received signal. [1]
Loading Using Lumped Elements
Load an antenna using a lumped element. In other words, how to create a simple matching network by adding a lumped load at the feed. You can load an antenna to make it smaller, enable matching at the feedline, or to make the antenna larger to obtain higher performance. This example uses a cloverleaf antenna to demonstrate the impedance matching using the lumped element.
Design Variations of Microstrip Patch Antenna Using PCB Stack
Use the pcbstack to design basic, parasitic, direct-coupled, and CP patch antennas.
Create Antenna Model from Gerber Files
Create an antenna model from Gerber files and subsequently analyze the antenna. The Gerber file format is used in printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing and is defined in the RS-274X standard which is the newer extended Gerber format. The Antenna Toolbox™ supports the newer RS-274X format both to generate Gerber files from an antenna model as well as to create an antenna model from a set of Gerber files.
Videos
Explore, Pick, Iterate: Three Steps for Antenna Design
Rapidly design an antenna for your application using the Antenna
Designer App.
PCB Antenna Design, Simulation, and Fabrication with MATLAB
Design a PCB antenna using the Antenna
ToolboxTM.
PCB Antenna Design and Optimization
Design and optimize PCB antennas using PCB Antenna Designer
App.
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