Model simplification and validation of virtual prototypes for vehicular antenna design

Wireless connectivity is becoming an important feature in cars, which together with recent developments in car design point to the need to accurately predict the performance of real antennas in simulation, to speed up the design cycle. However, it is challenging to accurately represent structurally complex real cars in simulation. This paper proposes a car model simplification approach for designing vehicular antennas, exemplified using three progressively simplified models of a hatchback car. For validation, a monopole and a PIFA operating at 800 MHz and 2.4 GHz, respectively, were mounted and simulated at two locations on these prototypes. The proposed scheme reduced the computational time to less than a third, while maintaining similar simulated antenna performance. Specifically, the antenna patterns of the simplest prototype and original one are correlated by 84% and 59% at 800 MHz and 2.4 GHz, respectively. Therefore, the proposed scheme is promising for real application.