Just recently we received independent comparison results from Philip Catherwood, a PhD in wireless communications from Queen's University Belfast. He's always very interested in researching new technologies and comparing possible options for different software. We're proud to share such a comparison from a real expert in this field.
From this comparison, we can see how impressed Philip was with the fact that the CENOS radio frequency software is much more user-friendly than FHSS and CST (which, in his opinion, offer so many opportunities to make a mistake and create a bad simulation).
Now let's look at his latest results comparing CST, Antenna Magus and CENOS RF with a particular antenna. This time he wanted to try three different simulation software and compare the results, ease of use and price. The antenna chosen was a planar inverted F antenna on FR4.
Antenna Magus results
Antenna Magus' estimation simulator was used to model the antenna. It only provides rudimentary statistics, but it does provide important details like the radiation pattern's shape for the chosen geometry, the reflection co-efficient with relation to frequency, and 2D polar plots.
CST results
CST was used to simulate the antenna and produce data for the radiation pattern's shape and corresponding field strength, reflection co-efficient against frequency, and VSWR.
CENOS RF results
CENOS RF was used to simulate the antenna and display the findings for the radiation pattern's shape and corresponding field strength, S11, S11 phase, VSWR, and 2D polar plots (also known as linear graphs).
Conclusions from the comparison of simulation results with CENOS RF, CST and Antenna Magus
All three simulation software packages simulate the selected antenna with similar results, with CENOS RF giving a good representation of the antenna's performance (the radiation pattern is shown below for comparison of a simulation parameter). The same is true for other parameters such as VSWR, S11, etc.
Overall, the results of the CENOS simulation would lead to the same design decisions as the results of the CST simulation. Therefore, the obvious question arises as to whether it's justified to pay 8-10 times more in annual license fees for Cenos's competitor solutions (such as CST) when the user-friendly and faster-to-use CENOS RF software creates identical design decisions for engineers and researchers tasked with antenna design & development.
