A Time-Based Approach for the Synthesis of Antennas for UWB Communication Systems

In Ultra‐Wideband (UWB) Communications, the design of the radiating system is a very demanding task. Since high data rates are obtained by transmitting very short temporal pulses, the correct reception of the transmitted waveforms plays a fundamental role to guarantee the reliability of the whole UWB system. Under these hypotheses the design of the antennas as independent devices is no more acceptable. Consequently, customized synthesis techniques are needed [1] as well as appropriate analysis tools for an accurate description of the behavior of the antennas in the time domain [2]. In this paper, an innovative approach for the design of antennas compliant to the UWB requirements is presented. In such an approach, the whole system constituted by both transmitting/receiving antennas and the communication channel is modeled in order to allow an accurate characterization of the whole set of interactions and mutual effects. Besides a good impedance matching over the operating bandwidth, UWB antennas are characterized by distortionless propagation properties suitable to assure a correct reception of the UWB waveforms. Towards this end, a Particle Swarm Optimizer (PSO) [3] is suitably integrated into a time‐domain (FDTD) electromagnetic simulator.