Simulation Analysis of Ansys HFSS and CST Microwave Studio for

Frequency Selective Surface

Kang Luo, Song-Hu Ge*, Lei Zhang, Hong-Bo Liu, Jin-Ling Xing
National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Vessel Integrated Power System
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China under Grant 61801501.

Abstract—In this paper, the simulations of Ansys HFSS and CST Dx

Microwave Studio for frequency selective surface (FSS) are dis-
cussed. The definitions of the Floquet modes, mesh density, and the d1 d2 d1 aw at
distance between Floquet port and FSS surface affects the accuracy
of the corresponding transmission coefficients. According to the
example of a typical biplanar symmetric hybrid radome, the efficient
w

Dz
simulation conditions of the two softwares for FSS are summarized. ε1 ε2 ε1
Index Terms—frequency selective surface, HFSS, CST.
lb

I. INTRODUCTION
Frequency selective surfaces (FSSs) are widely applied as (a) side view (b) top view
Fig. 1. Frame-cross FSS topology, ε1=1.3, ε2=1.9, aw=0.225, at=0.9, lb=2.85,
spatial f lters, antenna ref ectors, radomes, absorbers, artif cial d1=9, d2=5.5, Dx=Dz=7.2(unit: mm).
magnetic conductors, as well as electromagnetic band-gap 0 TE 2
materials due to their bandpass or bandstop characteristics [1]. TE 3
Transission coefficient ˄dB˅ TE 5
Efficient and high-precision analysis method is an important
-10
tool and technical support for the design, research and devel-
opment of FSS [2, 3]. It is one of the main research hotspots
accompanying the development of FSS. Generally, numerical -20
methods of electromagnetic field are used, such as method of
moment (MoM), finite element method (FEM), finite differ-
-30
ence time-domain method (FDTD [4, 5]). Commercial elec- 4 8 12 16
tromagnetic solvers based on numerical calculation (e.q. An- Frequency ˄GHz˅
(a) TE mode
sys HFSS, CST Microwave Studio, Comsol, Feko and East- 0
Wave) provide a convenient way to analysis and design fre-
Transission coefficient ˄dB˅

quency selective surface (FSS) [6-8]. Among them, Ansys

HFSS and CST Microwave Studio are widely applied due to -10
TM 2
the friendly interface and highly accuracy. However, the simu- TM 3
TM 5
lation conditions are usually ambiguous which may result in a
-20
waste of computing resources or lowly accuracy. Especially,
for the theoretic analysis or optimization of FSS, the efficient
simulation is necessary. -30
4 8 12 16
In this paper, the simulation condition of Ansys HFSS and Frequency ˄GHz˅

CST Microwave Studio for FSS are studied, namely the num-
ber of the Floquet modes, the distance between the Floquet
and the FSS surface, the mesh density, etc. Based on a large
number of simulation analysis, the setting of simulation condi-
tions considering both accuracy and efficiency is summarized.
II. SIMULATION ANALYSIS OF CST
The biplanar symmetric hybrid radome is plotted in Fig. 1
and the associated structure parameters are shown in the cap-
tion. All the simulation discussed in this paper is based on this
example with incident angle θ=60°.
(a) TM mode
Fig. 2 Transmission coefficients under different numbers of Floquet modes
For the simulation analysis of CST, the transmission coeffi-
cient of Fig. 1 under TE and TM modes for different numbers
of Floquet modes are illustrated in Fig. 2. In can be observed
that the transmission coefficient are robust the numbers of
Floquet modes. In fact, the high order modes are evanescent
waves which usually do not affect the spatial filter property [1,
2]. Therefore, for the efficient simulation of CST, the numbers
of Floquet modes are recommended as 2 (the first mode corre-
sponds to TE00/TM00, while the second mode corresponds to
TM00/TE00).

978-1-7281-2168-0/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

 As shown in Fig. 3, when the Floquet modes are selected as
5 and 20, the CST mesh is split, and the results are not exactly
the same, but basically on an "order of magnitude". It should
be pointed out that, the default mesh density for Fig .1(Fmin
2GHz, Fmax18GHz, different numbers of Floquet modes 18)
is Steps per wavelength 4 and min numbers of steps 10.
Furthermore, the transmission coefficients under different
fine mesh density are simulated. The numbers in the icons are
represented in turn Floquet modes, step per wavelength and
(a) 5 (b) 20 min numbers of steps. As shown in Fig. 4, the numbers are
Fig. 3 CST default meshing for different numbers of Floquet modes
recommended no less than “2_6_20”. In this case, the curves
0 are convergent with moderate simulation consumption.
Transission coefficient ˄dB˅

-10
III. SIMULATION ANALYSIS OF HFSS
For the simulation analysis of HFSS, with the increase of
TE 5_4_10
the number of the Floquet mode, the pass band of transmission
-20
TE 5_8_20 coefficients shift downward, as illustrated in Fig. 5. Conse-
TE 20_4_10
TE 20_8_20 quently, the number of the Floquet mode for HFSS is recom-
-30 mended no less than 20.
4 8 12 16
Frequency ˄GHz˅ 0
(a)
0
Transission coefficient ˄dB˅
-10
Transission coefficient ˄dB˅

-10 TM 5
TM 10
TM 5_4_10 TM 15
-20 TM 20
TM 5_8_20
TM 20_4_10
-20
TM 20_8_20

-30
4 8 12 16
-30 Frequency ˄GHz˅
4 8 12 16
Frequency ˄GHz˅ (a) TM
(b) 0
0
Transission coefficient ˄dB˅
Transission coefficient ˄dB˅

-5 -10

TE 5
-10
-20 TE 10
TM 5_8_20 TE 15
TM 2_8_20 TE 20
-15
TM 2_4_10
-30
4 8 12 16
-20 Frequency ˄GHz˅
6 8 10 12 14
Frequency (GHz) (b) TE
(c) Fig. 5 Transmission coefficients under different numbers of Floquet modes.
0
0
Transission coefficient ˄dB˅

-5
Transmission coefficient (dB)

-10
-10
TM 2_4_20
TM 2_6_10 TM 30mm
TM 2_6_20 -20 TM 50mm
-15
TM 70mm

-20
6 8 10 12 14 -30
Frequency (GHz) 4 8 12 16
(d) Frequency (GHz)
Fig. 4 transmission coefficients under different fine mesh density (a) TM mode 5
 0 0

Transmission coefficient (dB)

Transmission coefficient (dB)

-10 -10

TM 30mm
-20 TM 50mm -20
TM 70mm HFSS default meshing
HFSS ffne devision
CST
-30
-30
4 8 12 16
4 8 12 16
Frequency ˄GHz˅
Frequency ˄GHz˅
(a) TE mode
(b) TM mode 10 0
0

Transmission coefficient (dB)

Transmission coefficient (dB)

-10
-10

-20
-20 TE 30mm HFSS default meshing
TE 50mm HFSS fine devision
TE 70mm CST
-30
4 8 12 16
-30
Frequency ˄GHz˅
4 8 12 16
Frequency ˄GHz˅ (b) TM mode
(c) TE mode 5 Fig. 8 Transmission coefficients of CST and HFSS.
0
The HFSS meshing under different mesh density is shown
in Fig. 7 (Start frequcncy 2GHz, stop frequency 20GHz, solu-
Transmission coefficient (dB)

-10 tion frequency 10GHz, distance 50mm, mode 10). The default
maxmiun length of elements is 1.44mm, the fine division cor-
responds to 0.6mm. The associated transmission coefficients
-20 TE 30mm
TE 50mm are compared with CST (simulation condition “5_8_20”). In
TE 70mm can be observed in Fig. 8 that compared with HFSS, CST has
-30 better efficiency in this case.
4 8 12 16
Frequency ˄GHz˅
(d) TE mode 10 IV. CITING PREVIOUS WORK
Fig. 6 Transmission coefficients under different distances between the Floquet
ports and FSS surface. The simulation analysis of HFSS and CST for FSS is pro-
vided in this paper. For CST, the Floquet modes, step per
The distance between the Floquet ports and FSS surface wavelength and min numbers of steps are recommended no
slightly influence the transmission coefficients when the num- less than 2, 6 and 20, respectively. For HFSS, the distance
ber of Floquet mode is defined as 5(Start frequcncy 2GHz, between the Floquet ports and FSS surface is suggested about
1.66λ at the centre frequency. Besides, the number of Floquet
stop frequency 20GHz, solution frequency 10GHz), as shown
modes should be no less than 20.
in Fig.6. However, if mode number is defined as 10, the dis-
tance has a greater impact on transmission coefficients. The
REFERENCES
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