Although an outside vendor will provide the antennas specified in the Design Document, it is important to maintain a deep understanding of how the antennas used interact with the physical propagation channel throughout all five phases of WSCE.  The reasons are:

a) The antenna is currently viewed as the interface between the system in use and the propagation environment.  Current technical trends are moving towards a tighter integration of processing and antennas.  As this occurs one can foresee a system concept where the propagation channel is deemed to be part of the entire system and fade mitigation techniques are built-in system features.  In such a scenario a detailed simulation of EM propagation by the antenna would be useful.

b) If we are able to share data sets with ESA it may be necessary to renormalize both their data and ours into a common scheme.  If antenna issues arise, the ability to simulate them may be helpful.

c) The rate of technology development in active integrated antennas is significant.  Over the course of the WCSE effort a technology refresh of some of the ground station antennas may be wise.  A simulation of how that would change the Experiment Plan would be wise.



With the above in mind, a simulation system for antenna performance will go forward in phases 2 – 5 of WCSE.
Commercially available simulation tools include [1]:



• ADS (Advanced Design System); Agilent, USA
• EMPIRE; IMST, Germany
• EMPro (Electromagnetic Professional); Agilent, USA
• HFSS (High-Frequency Structure Simulator); Ansoft, USA
• Microwave Studio; CST, Germany
• SEMCAD Schmidt & Partner Engineering; AG, Switzerland
• XFDTD; Remcom, USA

References

[1] Gustrau, Frank. RF and Microwave Engineering. Munich: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.