Comparative Assessment of Electromagnetic Simulation Tools for Use in Microstrip Antenna Design: Experimental Demonstrations

Abstract

This paper presents a better understanding of the use of finite integration techniques (FIT) and finite element method (FEM) in different types of microstrip antennas in order to determine which numerical method gives relatively more accurate results. Although the theoretical formulation based on Maxwell's equations of both FEM and FIT are approached from different aspects in the literature, there is still a lack of comparison of the same antenna type using different numerical methods employing FEM and FIT. Therefore, in this study, FEM and FIT were applied to two different types of microstrip antennas, and their simulation and experimental results was compared. For the first antenna demonstration, a multilayer structure was chosen to achieve one of the significant parameters. Then, a microstrip antenna with a compact structure was used in the second demonstration. Using these two antennas, the accuracy of FEM and FIT in different structures were compared and all simulated return loss and gain results were verified by the measured results. The experimental demonstrations show that FEM performs better for both types of microstrip antennas while FIT provides an adequate result for two-layer microstrip antennas.