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Phased antenna array design with CST STUDIO SUITE

Conference Paper · April 2016

DOI: 10.1109/EuCAP.2016.7481530

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 Phased Antenna Array Design
with CST STUDIO SUITE
Marc Rütschlin, Tilmann Wittig, Zeev Iluz
CST Computer Simulation Technology, Darmstadt, Germany, marc.ruetschlin@cst.com
Abstract— This paper illustrates a full simulation design flow
for a low profile Ku band satellite communications phased array
for airborne use. A variety of numerical methods are used in
tandem on a single model within a single simulation environment
to perform the complete design and analysis of the array. An
FEM simulation with a full Floquet port boundary
implementation is used to optimize the cell geometry of the array
unit cell simultaneously for operation at multiple frequencies and
multiple scan angles. A time domain approach is used to analyse
the full array including edge effects and curvature of an
enclosure. A hybrid field coupling approach employs an
asymptotic shooting bouncing ray (SBR) simulation to predict
the installed performance of the array on the roof of an aircraft.
The effect of an aerodynamic sandwich radome is considered as
part on the radiating structure, both at the unit cell level and the
full array level.
Index Terms— EM simulation, antenna, antenna array,
matching, radome, installed performance
I. INTRODUCTION
The flexibility and benefits of active electronically scanned
arrays has seen their use as high end antennas in applications
like RADAR, surveillance and communication, increase
dramatically in the last few years, both for terrestrial and
airborne use. The electromagnetic design of these devices is
challenging and numerical simulation has become an
indispensable part of the design process. But the demands that
the design places on a simulation tool is very high. This paper
describes new array design functionality in CST STUDIO
SUITE® [1] which makes the design of phased arrays, and
related planar devices like polarizers or frequency selective
surfaces (FSSs), at both the cell and full array level
substantially more efficient and powerful.
This paper explains a full design flow for a Ku band uplink
satellite communications array for airborne use, operating in
the 14-14.5 GHz frequency band. The initial design of the low
profile antenna elements will show one of the key benefits of
the new functionality: the ability to optimize the unit cell
geometry simultaneously for operation at multiple frequencies
and multiple scan angles. The positioning of the antenna on the
roof of an aircraft requires the design of an aerodynamic
radome which must be considered as part of the radiating
structure, both at the unit cell level and the full array level. In
addition, a hybrid field coupling approach is used to
investigate the effect of positioning the array on the aircraft at
various locations. The Complete Technology approach in CST
STUDIO SUITE allows a variety of numerical methods to be
used in tandem to perform the complete analysis: an FEM
simulation is used to optimize the antenna at the unit cell level,
a time domain approach is used for the full array analysis,
while an asymptotic shooting bouncing ray (SBR) simulation
is used to predict the installed performance of the array.
The unit cell design principle also applies to the
optimization of planar periodic structures like polarizers and
FSSs to support a range of incident angles. This is an important
consideration when an FSS is intended to be a conformal part
of a curved structure such as a radome.
II. ANTENNA UNIT CELL DESIGN
The desired application for the array introduces the
requirement for a low-profile broadband antenna that is
capable of beam-steering and polarization tracking in order to
track satellites and hop between them as the aircraft moves.
The antenna design tool Antenna Magus [2] was used to find
and perform the initial design of a promising candidate: an
elliptical-ring stacked pin-fed linearly polarized patch antenna.
This antenna is planar, can be made sufficiently broadband for
the application of interest, and can be made circular. Placing
two excitation pins separated by 90º allows any linear
polarization to be generated by appropriately phasing the two
feeds.
The initial design was modified to have two identical
substrate layers of low-loss Rogers RT5880 of 0.787 mm
thickness with a real permittivity of 2.2. An additional feed pin
was added to the first so that arbitrary linear polarization could
be achieved by correct phasing of the exciting ports. The size
of the ground and substrate was reduced to be a quarter of a
wavelength at the highest frequency of interest. A ring of vias
was also added around each unit cell in order to suppress
surface waves which can propagate in planar arrays and cause
a deterioration of the radiation properties of the array. All these
modifications resulted in the antenna element no longer being
matched adequately in the frequency range of interest, so an
optimisation of the patch dimensions and feed position was
performed to improve S11 to better than -10 dB between 14
and 14.5 GHz. The FEM solver in CST MICROWAVE
STUDIO® (MWS) was used with a curved tetrahedral mesh
and a full Floquet port boundary condition implementation in
order to calculate the response of the antenna element as if it
were in an infinitely large array of identical elements. The
evolution of the antenna geometry and reflection coefficient
are shown in Fig. 1(a) and Fig. 1(b) respectively.
 for all scan angles of interest. Similar results are found for all
other frequencies of interest as well.
The isolation between the two exciting ports – also a direct
output of the parameter sweep – is below -10 dB for all scan
angles of interest, as shown in Fig. 3. Another output is
coupling between the exciting port(s) and the outgoing Floquet
port modes, which gives the broadband Active Element Pattern
(AEP) [3] of the antenna element as it is scanned. This is
shown for -50º ≤ θ ≤ 50º and -90º ≤ φ ≤ 90º in Fig. 4. This
figure can be used to predict how closely the drop in gain
corresponds to the theoretical best-case cos(θ) drop when
scanning off boresight. In addition, this figure multiplied by
the array factor is a good prediction of the overall array farfield
for large arrays, i.e. those with many elements.
Fig. 1(a). Evolution of the antenna geometry from initial design (1), to detuned
array element (2), to optimised array element (3).

Fig. 1(b). Evolution of the reflection coefficient of the antenna elements

corresponding to the evolutionary stages in Fig. 1(a). The results for models 2
and 3 were calculated with a FEM simulation using unit cell boundaries with
0º phase shift, i.e. for broadside radiation.
Fig. 2. The active element impedance for the antenna element at 14.5 GHz is
better than -10 dB for scan angles of -50º ≤ θ ≤ 50º and -90º ≤ φ ≤ 90º
The limitation of the seemingly positive result in Fig. 1 is (demarcated by the dashed rectangle), where the boresight axis is
that it only reflects the behaviour of the antenna when all perpendicular to the plane of the antenna.
antennas are excited in phase, i.e. for broadside radiation of the
array. Steering the beam of the array to other angles will
change the matching performance – the active element
impedance (AEI) [3] – of the individual elements so that they
may no longer meet specification. In order to ensure that the
antennas will behave correctly for all scan angles of interest,
the System Assembly and Modelling framework in CST
STUDIO SUITE may be used in order to set up a nested
optimisation. The outer optimisation loop modifies the
geometry of the antenna element, while at each optimisation
step the inner loop performs a parameter sweep of the scan
angles of the unit cell boundary conditions in order to simulate
scanning of the array. The worst case AEI for broadside
operation and the extrema of scan angles θ and φ is monitored
– across all frequencies of interest – and used as a goal for the
global optimiser (in this case based on a covariance matrix
adaptation evolutionary strategy (CMA-ES)).
The resulting antenna geometry is then evaluated over the
entire scanning range at a higher resolution at all frequencies
Fig. 3. The isolation between the two exciting ports at 14.5 GHz is also
of interest in order to ensure that there are no angles at which consistently below -10 dB for all scanning angles of interest (demarcated by
scan blindness may be encountered. A representative result at the dashed rectangle).
14.5 GHz (in Fig. 2.) shows that the AEI is better than -10 dB

Fig. 4. The Active Element Impedance of the array element at 14.5 GHz for
scan angles of -80º ≤ θ ≤ 80º and -90º ≤ φ ≤ 90º.
III. FULL ARRAY SIMULATION
The unit cell level study would perfectly predict the
behaviour of the array if it consisted of an infinite number of
identical elements. In reality the size of the array is finite, and
there are non-periodic effects to consider, for example the
influence of edge elements, calibration lines, and the curvature
of an enclosing radome. In order to take these effects into
account it is necessary to simulate the full array.
An array layout was synthesized to achieve a main beam
gain of 26 dBi and side lobe levels below -20 dB. The
construction of the array is made easy in CST STUDIO SUITE
by using the Phased Array task in CST DESIGN STUDIO™
(CST DS), which uses the unit cell geometry with a layout
description to rapidly construct the full array geometry and
automatically set up the port excitations according to a user
defined excitation taper (a Taylor distribution with -27 dB
relative side lobe level was used for this example) and a
parametrically defined scan angle. The layout used in this
example is shown in Fig. 5. A 16×16 element array of active
elements (marked red in Fig. 5) was surrounded by a double
ring of passive elements (marked blue in Fig. 5). The function
of these passive elements is to reduce the influence of the
active edge elements, so that the unit cell level design is a
better predictor of overall array performance.
Fig. 5. The Phased Array task uses the unit cell geometry in combination with
the array layout description to construct the full array. The individual array
elements can be specified to be active (red), passive (blue) or empty (grey).
This simulation model is clearly substantially larger than
the single unit cell, so the FEM solver is not the most
appropriate since its numerical requirements scale
exponentially with problem size. Instead, a time domain
approach is preferred, since its numerical requirements scale
linearly so that problems of several hundred million unknowns
can be simulated on a single consumer-grade PC. The Finite
integration technique time domain method in CST MWS was
used with its conformal Perfect Boundary Approximation
(PBA)® conformal meshing approach [4] to accurately
simulate the rounded structure without any stair-casing effect.
Simulation can be accelerated by making use of GPU
acceleration like the pair of NVIDIA Tesla K80 cards which
were used in this case to reduce the simulation time of the full
array for a single scan angle to under an hour.
The full 3D farfield result of the simulation at 14.5 GHz is
shown in Fig. 6 for the array operated at scan angle of θ = 50º.
The array is covered by a 3-layer sandwich radome consisting
of two outer layers of quartz (εr = 3.3, tanδ = 0.0004) enclosing
a honeycomb structure which, in this frequency range, can be
accurately simulated by modeling it as a bulk material with a
single effective permittivity (εr = 1.1). In Fig. 7 a horizontal
cutplane (φ = 0º) through the farfield shows the effect of the
radome on radiation close to grazing angle, as well as the
effect on the 3rd and lower sidelobes. The peak gain of the
farfield shows a drop of roughly 2 dB in the main beam when
it is scanned from boresight to θ = 50º, which corresponds very
well to the theoretical cos(θ) prediction of 1.9 dB [5]. In
addition, the effect of the radome on the main beam gain and
shape is negligible, as seen in Fig. 7.
Fig. 6. The 3D farfield of the array including the effect of the radome shows a
peak gain of 26.5 dBi.

Fig. 7. A horizontal cutplane through the farfield at 14.5 GHz shows the effect
of the radome on the radiation characteristics of the array.
IV. INSTALLED PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
It is beneficial to be able to simulate the effect of installing
the array on its intended platform – the aircraft – at a
relatively early stage of the design process, since this can
reveal flaws in the design before a costly mistake is made.
Understanding the effect of positioning the antenna at
different locations on the aircraft, both in terms of the effect
of that position on the radiating performance of the antenna,
and how it couples (intentionally or unintentionally) to other
antennas, is also something that simulation can facilitate. The
challenge is that the simulation becomes rather complex since
one is considering the possible tiny geometric features of the
antenna in the context of electrically large aircraft. No single
numerical technique handles this well. A hybrid approach is
the only realistic way of obtaining accurate results in a
reasonable amount of time.
First, the antenna array is simulated, as described in Section
III, by using a full-wave volumetric time domain approach.
The electric and magnetic fields on a virtual box surrounding
the antenna are recorded, and then subsequently used as an
equivalent near-field excitation source for a simulation of the
aircraft by a numerical approach which is better suited to this
application, like the MLFMM method which is one of the
integral equation module solvers, or an asymptotic ray tracing
approach like the Shooting Bouncing Ray (SBR) method. All
these can be combined seamlessly using the System Assembly
and Modelling (SAM™) framework in CST STUDIO SUITE.
In this example, the array is placed on top of the main
chassis of an aircraft which has a length of 42.6 m and a
wingspan of 34.9 m, or approximately 2069 by 1687
wavelengths respectively at 14.5 GHz. An image of the field
source location on the aircraft is shown in Fig. 8. An
important feature of the SAM approach is that the position of
the field source is derived from a master model containing all
the geometric information about where the various parts of the
system, consisting of the aircraft and any antennas which may
be on it, are placed.
Fig. 8. An equivalent field source representation of the array is recorded after a
time domain simulation, and then placed automatically at the antenna location
for simulation using the asymptotic solver.
Fig. 9. A vertical farfield cutplane shows the effect of positioning the antenna
on the aircraft. The main beam is tilted up by 1º, and the upper hemisphere
sidelobes and radiation behaviour below the aircraft are strongly affected.
The resulting farfield of the installed antenna is shown in
Fig. 9. The simulation was done at 14.5 GHz with the
asymptotic solver, a SBR implementation which makes of a
curved surface mesh and supports thin transparent dielectrics
(like the windows shown in Fig. 9) as well as various other
material models of dielectric coatings.
V. CONCLUSION
This article has described an example phased array design
workflow from unit cell to installed performance of the
antenna to illustrate how the engineer can benefit from having
access to multiple numerical solver technologies within a
single simulation environment.
Much of the design work for an array is done at the unit
cell level. An FEM solver with full Floquet port boundary
conditions was used to optimise the array element for correct
operation in the 14 – 14.5 GHz frequency range, not only for
boresight but simultaneously for all scan angles of interest.
This ability is also of great importance for the design of other
planar periodic structures like polarizers or frequency
selective surfaces (FSSs).
The full array including a covering low-profile radome was
simulated using the numerically more efficient time domain
solver. This was linked to the asymptotic SBR solver in a
hybrid approach to installed performance simulation by challenge of High Precision Field Computation" Proc. of the XIX
International Linear Accelerator Conference (LINAC 98),
coupling via a near field equivalent source. Chicago, USA, 1998, pp. 860-862.
REFERENCES [5] T. C. Cheston and J. Frank, “Phased array radar antennas.” Radar
Handbook, 1990, Section 7-1.
[1] CST STUDIO SUITE®, CST AG, Germany, www.cst.com.
[2] Antenna Magus, Magus (Pty) Ltd, South Africa,
www.antennamagus.com.
[3] W. L. Stutzman and G. A. Thiele, Antenna Theory and Design,
2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1998, pp. 125-135.
[4] B. Krietenstein, R. Schuhmann, P. Thoma, and T. Weiland: "The
Perfect Boundary Approximation Technique facing the big

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