Resource-Efficient Simulation Framework for Accurate UWB Antenna System Design

Next-generation ultrawideband (UWB) applications require high-performance and fully integrated UWB antenna systems to guarantee accurate localization and sensing in challenging Internet of Things (IoT) environments. This article proposes an entire system-level simulation framework that accelerates the design and optimization of integrated UWB antenna systems for various IoT applications by accurately predicting the effects of the entire system integration environment and enabling time-efficient optimization of system-level metrics. These metrics include the system fidelity factor and the distance estimation error in full 3-D, which are required to minimize orientation-specific pulse distortion and phase-center variation. To reconcile fast and accurate system-level performance prediction with reduced computational resources, the UWB link is partitioned, enabling the combination of standalone full-wave antenna simulations, UWB front-end circuit models, and UWB wireless channel models considering all antenna and circuit imperfections. Moreover, this simulation framework is the first to include the Huygens’ field equivalence principle to efficiently and accurately model the entire system environment, crucial to ensure high-performance UWB antenna systems for integrated IoT applications. To validate the simulation framework, an extensive time-domain measurement campaign was performed on a representative UWB link, including multiple integration platforms. Simulation and measurement results correspond well and show that the presence of the actual integration platform significantly impacts the system performance along different orientations. The simulation framework is several orders of magnitude faster than what is currently achievable with conventional electromagnetic field simulators and facilitates the development of high-performance and fully integrated UWB systems that satisfy the needs of demanding IoT applications.