A comparison of commercial software packages for microstrip antenna analysis

Both computer power and software capabilities have increased substantially, and there are now a variety of general purpose software packages commercially available for the analysis and design of antennas and microwave components. Before the advent of such software, a common practice in industry and universities was to write custom computer codes for the solution of a specific antenna geometry. Although this situation led to steady progress in the development of improved numerical electromagnetics methods, as well as the nurturing of a generation of electromagnetics practitioners, it was a costly, slow, and inflexible approach. Today it is usually much more cost effective to acquire and use general purpose CAD packages capable of modeling a wide range of antenna geometries that may be of interest. Nevertheless, not all antenna CAD packages have the same capabilities or performance, and each may be best suited for a particular type of problem. We compare five commercial software packages for the analysis of several types of commonly used microstrip antennas. Factors including accuracy, speed of execution, setup time, and cost are presented. Measured impedance data is used as a standard for comparison, and results are also compared with custom full-wave moment method codes.