HFSS Modeling an interrogator antenna response to an on-chip component

[Algregious]

Hello,
I am trying to obtain the S11 parameters from an interrogator antenna to determine the resonant frequency of the component being interrogated. I know this is probably a pretty unconventional method of modeling, but it is something that we wanted to see if it would work and agree with our experiments.

The component is a 500MHz patch antenna; I have simulated the structure and I can confirm that its S11 dips at ~500MHz. I've taken that model and modelled an arbitrary antenna above it to see if I could capture the same results.
Has anyone ever tried this or might know some ways to improve the model? The new S11 does have a dip at ~500MHz but it seems to me that the interrogator's resonance overshadows it. Also, I am having trouble deciding a solution type and port setup; I am not an EE, but actually a third year ME intern.

Just for looking ahead, we plan to interrogate a much smaller passive sensor, so if anyone could give some tips regarding port setup and size of the interrogator antenna, I'd appreciate much!

I've attached a zip that contains the HFSS archive.

Thanks for any help!

 

[PlanarMetamaterials]

Hi Algregious,

Looks like your files didn't get attached. Regardless, I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to do. Is the idea that the resonant component will absorb energy in a certain band, and the rest will be reflected? In this case, you probably want to use a wideband (non-resonant) antenna as an interrogator, and observe the difference in reflection response with and without the component. This may be quite difficult to do however, as the difference may be small.

 

[Algregious]

Hi Algregious,

Looks like your files didn't get attached. Regardless, I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to do. Is the idea that the resonant component will absorb energy in a certain band, and the rest will be reflected? In this case, you probably want to use a wideband (non-resonant) antenna as an interrogator, and observe the difference in reflection response with and without the component. This may be quite difficult to do however, as the difference may be small.

It's possible that the size was too high. I remade the archive and zipped it without the results so it should be small enough to upload, but the project will need to be re-analyzed.

I'm still getting a grip on the actual antenna interactions explanations and stuff, but what I can say for sure is that our experiments will just consist of measuring the S11 of an interrogator antenna as it interrogates a passive component under various temperatures and see how the resonant peak would change in the passive component. So, we wanted to model that interaction in HFSS.

 

[PlanarMetamaterials]

I'm not sure how this is supposed to work; I don't think your interrogator (loop) antenna is going to be able to "sense" changes in the S11 of the patch via changing its own S11.

However, it may be able to discern power levels -- by computing the induced flux through the loop, you should be able to tell how far off of resonance the patch antenna is.

 

[vfone]

For some reasons, on both antennas I get different resonances that you got. You have some boundary overlap errors that need to fix.