An analysis of the printed inverted F antenna was carried out using the NEC2 program. This program is available in the public domain. It models antennas as wires.
One can set the wire radius. The disadvantage of the program is its inability to model dielectrics as substrates. However, in spite of this, with a bit of smarts a lot of information about antennas can be obtained from it. In case of a printed strip, Balanis’s book provides the conversion between the wire radius and the width of the strip for those who may be interested in further analysis. Our experience has been that no matter how much modeling is done ( as we did follow up with ADS MOMENTUM)in the end the antenna ends up being tuned by somewhat of a trial and error method. In our opinion both procedures are important. We need a quick way to assess the antenna operation using a program like NEC2 which is surprising fast and a more refined means of simulation like ADS or FEKO. Check out the article in the SPG website ( http://www.signalpro.biz) under engineer’s corner for printed antennas. ( Note: “Engineering pages”
has now been changed to “Engineer’s corner”.