Antennas are essential elements of any wireless system and their impact on the overall performance should not be neglected. In this webinar we will introduce designing antennas and antenna arrays with MATLAB, and will show how to integrate them into your system designs.

The analysis and integration of antennas requires in-depth understanding of the physical properties of the element and the surrounding structures. For this reason, antennas are generally designed by experts in the electromagnetic domain. From system-level perspective, adaptive algorithms that control the overall behavior need to be tuned and refined to take into account the antenna characteristics. For example, the radiation pattern of antenna arrays can be affected by coupling between elements and edge effects that should therefore be taken into account when developing beamforming algorithms. The early integration of antenna models with the rest of the RF front end reduces the risk of finding errors late, as often happens when antennas are tested for the first time in the lab using physical prototypes. 

MathWorks engineers will demonstrate how MATLAB and Antenna Toolbox can help you in designing antennas and antenna arrays, rapidly trying different configurations, and integrating them earlier at the system-level. We will see how, even without being an antenna expert, you can easily compute port, surface and field characteristics of antennas and arrays of antennas, and optimize their properties to fulfill the desired specifications. Antenna Toolbox uses the method of moments (MoM) for full EM simulation to provide accurate results, and it is fully integrated in MATLAB.

Agenda: 
We will begin by introducing the topic of antenna design and simulation in MATLAB focusing on radar and communications engineers. Next, we will evaluate different antenna elements including dipole, patch and spiral structures. We will then demonstrate how to build arrays of antennas for radar or MIMO systems.
Finally, we will show how to integrate antennas in phased array systems.