Virtual prototyping and optimization of mobile phone antennas with Genetic Algorithms

In this article, the virtual prototyping of mobile phone antennas is demonstrated with a FDTD-based electromagnetic simulation platform powered with GPU hardware acceleration. Through network parallelization and Generic Algorithms, antenna optimizations can be performed concurrently on multiple workstations. The simulation time required for an optimization task is reduced proportionally by the number of workstations utilized. The optimization features are demonstrated on a commercial mobile phone model, through the virtual prototyping process, different antenna designs can be optimized targeting multiple goals and operating scenarios. The numerical technique is proven to be efficient and effective for RF design optimization tasks.