MicroStripes v7 electromagnetic design simulation software for microwave and antenna design increases the speed with which users can tune their designs. The new version automatically runs a series of simulations while varying one or more design parameters over a user-specified range. This capability is supplemented by improvements in the accuracy of the automatic meshing algorithm. And the new version enables users to inspect simulation results more quickly by simply running their mouse over the graphical output.
By allowing users to substitute variables for design parameters, MicroStripes v7 speeds up the design process. Users model their concept design, identify geometric entities as variables, pick upper and lower limits for each variable, and select a step size. The software then generates as many simulation iterations as are required to completely explore the design space defined by the user. The results of each simulation are plotted on a single graph so users can quickly determine which design parameter values provide optimal performance.
The automatic meshing algorithm automatically mimics what experienced users do when they manually fine-tune the mesh, so that automatically generated meshes can be used for nearly all simulations. The accuracy of the results produced by automatically generated meshes is now equivalent to that produced by hand-tuned meshes in most cases.
Visualization of results in the new version has been improved to allow engineers to access the information they need to optimize their design more quickly. Running the mouse over a radiation pattern graph, for example, now yields the radiation magnitude at each point. Likewise, moving over electromagnetic field output produces field magnitude at any given point. The radiation pattern display has also been improved to directly show antenna efficiency and gain. Polarization schemes can now be changed with a single click of the mouse.
MicroStripes electromagnetic analysis software differs from other electromagnetic simulation software in that it uses the Transmission Line Matrix (TLM) method for solving Maxwell's equations. When applied to antenna design, the TLM method solves for all frequencies of interest in a single calculation and therefore captures the full broadband response of the system in one simulation cycle. A further advantage is that the TLM method creates a matrix of equivalent transmission lines and solves for voltage and current on these lines directly. This uses less memory and CPU time than solving for E and H fields on a conventional computational grid.
MicroStripes v7 is now available for all 64-bit Windows editions (x64 and Itanium). On these platforms, it comes with a 64-bit solver capable of solving problems requiring over 2Gbytes of memory.
