What Can the RF Module Do?
The RF Module solves problems in the general field of electromagnetic waves, such as RF and microwave applications, optics, and photonics. The underlying equations for electromagnetics are automatically available in all of the physics interfaces — a feature unique to COMSOL Multiphysics. This also makes nonstandard modeling easily accessible.
The module is useful for component design in virtually all areas where you find electromagnetic waves, such as:
•
Antennas
•
Filters, couplers, and power dividers
•
Planar circuits and passive devices
•
RF interconnects and packages
•
Waveguides and cavity resonators
•
Frequency-selective surfaces
•
Metamaterials
The physics interfaces cover the following types of electromagnetics field simulations and handle time-harmonic, time-dependent, and eigenfrequency/eigenmode problems:
•
In-plane, axisymmetric, and full 3D electromagnetic wave propagation
•
Full vector mode analysis in 2D and 3D
Material properties include inhomogeneous and fully anisotropic materials, media with gains or losses, and complex-valued material properties. In addition to the standard postprocessing features, the module supports direct computation of S-parameters and far-field radiation patterns. You can add ports with a wave excitation with specified power level and mode type, and add PMLs (perfectly matched layers) to simulate electromagnetic waves that propagate into an unbounded domain. For time-harmonic simulations, you can use the scattered wave or the total wave.
Using the multiphysics capabilities of COMSOL Multiphysics you can couple simulations with heat transfer, structural mechanics, fluid-flow formulations, and other physical phenomena.
This module also has interfaces for circuit modeling, a SPICE interface, and support for importing ECAD drawings.