LTCC Transmit/Receive X-Band Module with a Phased Array Antenna
5 www.cadence.com/go/awr
Step 3: Designing the Antenna in AntSyn Software
The next stage was to design the antennas. The 2x2 array was designed using the AntSyn EM-based antenna synthesis tool.
The goals of the antenna design and classes of antennas to explore were specified and then the AntSyn tool found the
optimal antenna automatically based on the chosen parameters.
The 2x2 patch antenna array was set to 10GHz and several parameters were also specified, including return loss and gain. The
resulting optimal antenna design model from AntSyn software was then exported directly to the AWR AXIEM planar EM
simulator (Figure 8).
Figure 8: The AntSyn antenna model for export to the AWR AXIEM simulator
Once imported into the AWR Microwave Office software specifically for EM simulation within the AWR AXIEM module, the metal
layers were mapped and the simulation run. As Figure 9 shows, a good match was reached.
Figure 9: AWR AXIEM simulation results