A Novel Approach for Mobile Device Design: GA-Based Distributed Optimization to Comply with OTA, SAR, and HAC Standards

The objective of this study was to investigate the cost and time effectiveness of virtual prototyping when applied to the optimization of antenna system design for mobile phones, compared to traditional development approaches. For the proposed evaluation, an enhanced commercial FDTD-based electromagnetic simulation platform, powered with GPU hardware acceleration and distributed network parallelization, was applied. Advanced genetic algorithms (GAs) were used to obtain robust antenna designs, targeting a multi-goal optimum within a minimum number of simulations. Various antenna structures, including folded monopoles, planar-inverted F, and folded-inverted-conformal antennas were considered. An optimized structure was developed in less than 24 hours, indicating the superiority of virtual prototyping over traditional design and optimization procedures for reducing costs, improving quality, and, particularly, in reducing development time.