IWS04: Efficient simulation of antenna placement on different platforms (Aeronautical, Automotive, Naval,...)

Wednesday - 3:00-4:40pm

Antennas, electrically large and complex CAD structures, meshing process, challenging requirements for several communication systems, fast and rigorous EM simulation techniques, … several topics combined in one workshop to build a complete guideline for engineers facing complex antenna placement scenarios. 

Eddy Jehamy

ALTAIR Engineering France

After PHD studies and seven years of antenna design and integration for automotive radars, Eddy JEHAMY joined Aeronautical company to work on antenna placement and integration on several helicopter classes. Civil and military aircrafts, require more than 20 antennas linked to the several communication and navigation systems. He worked on complete scenarios to meet the latest aeronautical standards and to avoid severe interferences between the different systems. He also patents a new idea to adapt the radar altimeter to complex integration scenario on helicopters (Publication number: 20160097848). Then he worked on weather and tactical radar integration behind radome structures, before he joined ALTAIR company as FEKO application engineer. His current research interests are in developing fast and useful process for antenna placement and integration for several applications.

Context

The topic of antenna placement is getting more and more attention to meet the challenging application requirements (radar, satcom, navigation, …) on very complex platforms dedicated for several domains (automotive, naval, aeronautics, satellites, …). Before performing an antenna placement analysis, and since complex platforms are considered, geometry healing and an advanced meshing process are required. Powerful and fast tools are essential to ease the tough meshing procedures, with manual and automatic methods. Several antennas with several frequency bands can be installed on the same platform. Thus several meshing densities and techniques, must be considered and linked to fast and rigorous numerical methods, to solve electrically large antenna placement problem. Hybridization between methods in the same EM analysis can be a good trade-off between complex and large structures to end up with light and fast computational simulations. 

Workshop structure 

This workshop is dedicated to the new techniques used to accelerate antenna placement scenarios on complex and electrically large structures (vehicles, ships, airplanes, satellites, etc.). The first workshop part exposes a powerful and useful tool: HyperMesh. Several methods to heal and fix faulty and complex 3D CAD parts structures are exposed. Manual and automatic processes are required to clean and mesh the CAD structures. Demonstration and examples of several features will be shown. The second workshop part is dedicated to the link between meshing blocks and EM simulation setup under FEKO. One has to deal with the different geometry parts and different materials classes and types. Several antenna types can also be considered for wide panel of applications on the same platform. Thus fast and automatic remeshing techniques are required to avoid repeated and tough processes for each frequency band application. In the last workshop part fast and rigorous numerical methods used in FEKO to solve several antenna placements scenarios will be presented. Direct and indirect hybridization methods are investigated for several applications (radars, GPS, satcom, etc.) to meet challenging placement and integration requirements.