Patch Antenna Design Using Sonnet v3.2

Designs a probe fed rectangular patch antenna using true electromagnetic simulation.

The program uses Sonnet or SonnetLite (the free version) to perform electromagnetic simulation on a probe fed, rectangular patch antenna. The design of the antenna is modified between Sonnet simulations. This design modification, simulation cycle is repeated until the antenna performs as intended.

This is version 3.2 of "Electromagnetic Design of a Probe Fed Patch Antenna". The original program has been significantly extended to allow for lossy conductors and substrates.

The purpose of this program is to demonstrate, a simple GUI, Registry searching, calling external programs, simple optimization, file I/O, customized plotting, etc.

This Program Works As Follows:
1) The GUI "SonnetAntennaDesignGUI.m" is run.
2) A GUI prompting the user to enter in the desired antenna performance is initialized.
3) Upon entering the data, the main program starts.
4) The user is prompted for the location where the desired version of Sonnet is installed on the system. Sonnet is an electromagnetic simulation program - SonnetLite is it's free version. Sonnet can be found at

http://www.sonnetsoftware.com

5) An initial antenna design is generated.
6) The design is written to a Sonnet Project File, and Sonnet is invoked.
7) After simulation, the antenna performance is gauged, and the design is altered accordingly.
8) The new design is resubmitted to Sonnet.
9) This process is repeated until the antenna performs as desired.
10) The performance results are display.

The resulting design can actually be MANUFACTURED. The performance of the antenna will very likely be just as predicted.

BOTH patch length and probe position are optimized.

Use, modification, and extension of this program is encouraged.

Questions are welcome.

Serhend Arvas,
Syracuse University

sarvas @ syr.edu