A FLOSS Visual EM Simulator for 3D Antennas

TL;DR

This paper presents FLOSS VEMSA3D, an open-source visual electromagnetic simulator for 3D antennas that is user-friendly, adaptable, and validated through practical applications and comparisons with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces an open-source, cross-platform visual EM simulation software for 3D antennas with GUI capabilities and detailed user instructions, enhancing accessibility and customization.

Findings

Effective in practical antenna applications

Comparable to experimental measurements

Accessible source code for community development

Abstract

This paper introduces the FLOSS Free Libre Open Source Software [VEMSA3D], a contraction of "Visual Electromagnetic Simulator for 3D Antennas", which are geometrically modeled, either exactly or approximately, as thin wire polygonal structures; presents its GUI Graphical User Interface capabilities, in interactive mode and/or in handling suitable formed antenna data files; demonstrates the effectiveness of its use in a number of practical antenna applications, with direct comparison to experimental measurements and other freeware results; and provides the inexperienced user with a specific list of instructions to successfully build the given source code by using only freely available IDE Integrated Development Environment tools-including a cross-platform one. The unrestricted access to source code, beyond the ability for immediate software improvement, offers to independent users and volunteer groups an expandable, in any way, visual antenna simulator, for a genuine research and development work in the field of antennas, adaptable to their needs.