Optenni Ltd. announces a new link between ANSYS® HFSS™ and Optenni Lab™ for designing matching circuits for antennas and other RF components based on 3D models simulated using the HFSS electromagnetic field simulation software.

An important challenge in the daily work of antenna design engineers is to ensure that technical specifications are met for antenna impedance bandwidth and efficiency. These characteristics can be enhanced significantly faster and easier using matching circuits than by modifying the antenna’s geometry. Traditionally, designing matching circuits has required special expertise in the areas of impedance matching and circuit simulation tools.

Using a single macro command, impedance results from ANSYS HFSS simulations can be transferred to Optenni Lab for matching circuit generation and other analyses of the simulated impedances. Optenni Lab provides fully automatic matching circuit generation and optimization routines. The user needs to specify only the desired frequency ranges and number of components in the matching circuit after which Optenni Lab provides a choice of optimized matching circuit topologies. Optenni Lab features an intuitive component library, fast tolerance analysis and simultaneous multiport matching.

In addition to matching circuit design, Optenni Lab can be used to predict the obtainable antenna bandwidth from simulated impedance data, using the concept of bandwidth potential, which helps the antenna designer to understand how the antenna is working and how the design should be modified for optimal bandwidth.

“One of our key strategies has been to build interoperability and links to leading software in the wireless arena and we are happy to add ANSYS HFSS to our collaboration partners,” commented Dr. Jussi Rahola, founder and Managing Director of Optenni Ltd. ”Optenni’s customers have been very excited to learn about the integrated workflow with HFSS, a leading electromagnetic simulator.” Dr. Matthew Commens, Product Manager, ANSYS HFSS added, “HFSS allows our customers to design antennas from simple wireless routers all the way to complex phased arrays for airborne radar. But optimal antenna performance is achieved when it is properly matched to the transceiver. By linking to the Optenni products, engineers can rapidly find optimal matching networks to ensure top performance.”

Availability

The link between ANSYS HFSS and Optenni Lab is available as of now. The HFSS macro for implementing the link can be downloaded from the Optenni web site.