The benefits of circuit and antenna co-simulation for optimising wideband structures

One of the main challenges in designing wideband antennas that are both small and high performance, is how this performance is affected when the antenna is integrated into the rest of the system. This paper details how dynamically co-simulating the antenna with the critical parts of the system, allows the designer to jointly optimise the overall solution. An example of an UWB antenna co-simulated with a matching circuit is presented, and this paper shows how it is possible to trade-off antenna size against the matching circuit whilst still maintaining a good overall performance.