The challenges for efficient and accurate EM simulations in the mobile terminal industry

The mobile industry is constantly pushing the envelope to construct smaller and more versatile wireless appliances. In contemporary designs, multiple wireless systems are introduced into the mobile terminal such as GSM/EDGE/3G TX and RX, Bluetooth, WLAN, GPS and perhaps even DVB-H, UWB. High data rate components such as camera (5MP+), display (QVGA+) and hi-speed internal memories and I/O-channels (USB 2.0, memory stick) are used in the phone. The unit itself shall preferably be made compact and small, which makes separation of subsystems difficult or often impossible. Instead of separating the systems, much work is spent to alleviate the effects of closely packed architecture by decoupling, shielding, grounding and other counter measures. While this is today performed in a systematic but manual way using empirical knowledge and measurements, the avenue of finding the problems before a build using EM simulations is very appealing.