Semi-automatic antenna design via sampling and visualization

Abstract

Optimization-based approaches to antenna design have enjoyed limited success. The task is often computationally intractable. Moreover, it is also often difficult to capture all relevant design issues and tradeoffs in a single mathematical objective function. Therefore, human experts typically specify and refine antenna designsby hand,üsing computers only to evaluate their candidate designs by simulation. In this paper we propose a middle ground between this traditional approach and fully automatic optimization. We use computation to sample a space of possible antenna designs, and we rely on human judgment to select good designs from the samples returned by the computer. The key elements of our computer system are a parallel algorithm for intelligently sampling a space of possible antenna designs and a graphical user interface for visualizing and exploring candidate designs and managing the sampling process. IEEE AP-S Intl SymposiumThis work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. AbstractOptimization-based approaches to antenna design have enjoyed limited success. The task is often computationally intractable. Moreover, it is also often difficult to capture all relevant design issues and tradeoffs in a single mathematical objective function. Therefore, human experts typically specify and refine antenna designs "by hand," using computers only to evaluate their candidate designs by simulation. In this paper we propose a middle ground between this traditional approach and fully automatic optimization. We use computation to sample a space of possible antenna designs, and we rely on human judgment to select good designs from the samples returned by the computer. The key elements of our computer system are a parallel algorithm for intelligently sampling a space of possible antenna designs and a graphical user interface for visualizing and exploring candidate designs and managing the sampling process. IntroductionThe idea of using computer-based optimization for design tasks has been applied to many problems, including antenna design. However, this idea does not always work well: the optimization problems are often intractable; and it often proves impossible to consider all relevant design criteria in the optimization process. In this paper we propose that the computer be used differently. Instead of having the computer search for a single optimal design, we program it to intelligently samp...

A design automation and power estimation flow for RFID systems

“…Automated approaches for antenna design such as those described may be applicable in concert with the physical and transaction layer design automation approaches described in this article. However, the antenna portion of RFID tags and systems is often hand designed for various applications with techniques that are not suitable for complete automation [Quidley et al 2002]. As such, automated antenna design is beyond the scope of this research.…”

Design and Analysis of Equilateral Triangular Single Patch Antenna with Side Length 8cm

“…The idea of using computer-based optimization for design tasks has been applied to many problems, including antenna design [4] with some predefined limitations.…”

Visualizing antenna design spaces

“…Such an approach had been applied earlier in a tool for graphics and animation design [16] as well as scheduling [1]. An overview of the design process that the system was designed to support is shown at the left of Figure 1, described in [17]. After the user set some initial ranges over which the design parameters could be varied, the system would simulate a large set of antennas and then select candidates for human inspection based on their maximal dispersion in a multidimensional evaluation space.…”

“…Our first prototype [17] applied human-guided search [1] [3] to the process of exploring and repeatedly refining a search through a very large space of possible designs for Yagi-Uda antennas. YagiUda antennas are a classic type of directional wire antenna such as one sees with conventional rooftop TV antennas.…”

“…This paper will focus on a subset of the prototypes in a discussion of lessons learned as we sought to bring our expertise as visual interface researchers to the problem of antenna design. The individual systems have been described in brief in other publications, m o s t l y i n I E E E a n t e n n a e n g i n e e r i n g c o n f e r e n c e s [12][13] [14] [17]. Details regarding our contribution to antenna engineering may be found there.…”