At the core of complex microwave system design

Powerful 3-D electromagnetic field solvers have long been used by engineers to design complex microwave components. In this article, we explored the powerful capabilities and comprehensive analyses that can be performed when electromagnetic field simulation is tightly and bi-directionally coupled to nonlinear circuit analysis. Simulations of an active phased-array antenna system were performed using coupled harmonic balance and finite element simulation. The effect of the nonlinearities of the transmit power amplifiers was observed to degrade the far-field radiation pattern as the input power was increased.