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Department of Microelectronic Systems
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total: 747
Catalog Publications
Year 2021
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Robust Parameter Tuning of Antenna Structures by Means of Design Specification Adaptation
PublicationParameter tuning through numerical optimization has become instrumental in the design of high-performance antenna systems. Yet, practical optimization faces several major challenges, including high cost of massive evaluations of antenna characteristics, normally involving full-wave electromagnetic (EM) analysis, large numbers of adjustable variables, the shortage of reasonable initial solutions in the case of topologically complex...
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Series-Slot-Fed Circularly Polarized Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output Antenna Array Enabling Circular Polarization Diversity for 5G 28-GHz Indoor Applications
PublicationIn this paper, a four-element circularly polarized series-slot-fed multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna array with circular polarization diversity is presented. The proposed design utilizes a combination of 45-degree inclined slots and a straight microstrip line feeding technique. The two antennas are designed to operate with the opposite sense of circular polarization (CP). CP is achieved by placing a patch of just about...
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Starter for Voltage Boost Converter to Harvest Thermoelectric Energy for Body-Worn Sensors
PublicationThis paper examines the suitability of selected configurations of ultra-low voltage (ULV) oscilla-tors as starters for a voltage boost converter to harvest energy from a thermoelectric generator (TEG). Important properties of particularly promising configurations, suitable for on-chip imple-mentation are compared. On this basis, an improved oscillator with a low startup voltage and a high output voltage swing is proposed. The applicability...
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Surrogate-Assisted Design of Checkerboard Metasurface for Broadband Radar Cross-Section Reduction
PublicationMetasurfaces have been extensively exploited in stealth applications to reduce radar cross section (RCS). They rely on the manipulation of backward scattering of electromagnetic (EM) waves into various oblique angles. However, arbitrary control of the scattering properties poses a significant challenge as a design task. Yet it is a principal requirement for making RCS reduction possible. This article introduces a surrogate-based...
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Unity-Gain Zero-Offset CMOS Buffer with Improved Feedforward Path
PublicationA voltage unity-gain zero-offset CMOS amplifier with reduced gain error and increased PSRR (power supply rejection ratio) is proposed. The amplifier uses two feed mechanisms, negative feedback and supporting positive feedforward, to achieve low deviation from unit gain over the entire input range. The circuit, designed in a standard 180-nanometer 1.8-voltage CMOS process, is compared with two known buffers of similar topology,...
Year 2020
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A 1-nS 1-V Sub-1-µW Linear CMOS OTA with Rail-to-Rail Input for Hz-Band Sensory Interfaces
PublicationThe paper presents an operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) with low transconductance (0.62–6.28 nS) and low power consumption (28–270 nW) for the low-frequency analog front-ends in biomedical sensor interfaces. The proposed OTA implements an innovative, highly linear voltage-to-current converter based on the channel-length-modulation effect, which can be rail-to-rail driven. At 1-V supply and 1-Vpp asymmetrical input driving,...
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A Conformal Circularly Polarized Series-Fed Microstrip Antenna Array Design
PublicationA conformal circularly polarized series-fed microstrip array design for broadside radiation is presented. The array aperture under design is conformal to a cylindrical surface of a given radius. The approach we present primarily addresses focusing of the circularly polarized major lobe of the conformal array by proper dimensioning of the aperture spacings. The proposed analytical models yield the values of the element spacings...
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A framework for accelerated optimization of antennas using design database and initial parameter set estimation
PublicationThe purpose of this paper is to exploit a database of pre-existing designs to accelerate parametric optimization of antenna structures is investigated. Design/methodology/approach The usefulness of pre-existing designs for rapid design of antennas is investigated. The proposed approach exploits the database existing antenna base designs to determine a good starting point for structure optimization and its response sensitivities....
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A Power-Efficient Digital Technique for Gain and Offset Correction in Slope ADCs
PublicationIn this brief, a power-efficient digital technique for gain and offset correction in slope analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) has been proposed. The technique is especially useful for imaging arrays with massively parallel image acquisition where simultaneous compensation of dark signal non-uniformity (DSNU) as well as photo-response non-uniformity (PRNU) is critical. The presented approach is based on stopping the ADC clock by...
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Accelerated design optimization of miniaturized microwave passives by design reusing and Kriging interpolation surrogates
PublicationElectromagnetic (EM) analysis has become ubiquitous in the design of microwave components and systems. One of the reasons is the increasing topological complexity of the circuits. Their reliable evaluation—at least at the design closure stage—can no longer be carried out using analytical or equivalent network representations. This is especially pertinent to miniaturized structures, where considerable EM cross-coupling effects occurring...
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Accelerated multi-objective design of miniaturized microwave components by means of nested kriging surrogates
PublicationDesign of microwave components is an inherently multiobjective task. Often, the objectives are at least partially conflicting and the designer has to work out a suitable compromise. In practice, generating the best possible trade‐off designs requires multiobjective optimization, which is a computationally demanding task. If the structure of interest is evaluated through full‐wave electromagnetic (EM) analysis, the employment of...
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Accelerated Re-Design of Antenna Structures Using Sensitivity-Based Inverse Surrogates
PublicationThe paper proposes a novel framework for accelerated re-design (dimension scaling) of antenna structures using inverse surrogates. The major contribution of the work is a sensitivity-based model identification procedure, which permits a significant reduction of the number of reference designs required to render the surrogate. Rigorous formulation of the approach is supplemented by its comprehensive numerical validation using a...
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Aerodynamic Shape Optimization for Delaying Dynamic Stall of Airfoils by Regression Kriging
PublicationThe phenomenon of dynamic stall produce adverse aerodynamic loading which can adversely affect the structural strength and life of aerodynamic systems. Aerodynamic shape optimization (ASO) provides an effective approach for delaying and mitigating dynamic stall characteristics without the addition of auxiliary system. ASO, however, requires multiple evaluations time-consuming computational fluid dynamics models. Metamodel-based...
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Antenna Modeling Using Variable-Fidelity EM Simulations and Constrained Co-Kriging
PublicationUtilization of fast surrogate models has become a viable alternative to direct handling of fullwave electromagnetic (EM) simulations in EM-driven design. Their purpose is to alleviate the difficulties related to high computational cost of multiple simulations required by the common numerical procedures such as parametric optimization or uncertainty quantification. Yet, conventional data-driven (or approximation) modeling techniques...
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Circular polarization diversity implementation for correlation reduction in wideband low-cost multiple-input-multiple-output antenna
PublicationIn this paper, a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna featuring circular polarization diversity, and designed on a common coplanar ground is presented. The proposed antenna design utilizes a coplanar waveguide (CPW) feeding technique with three parallel coplanar ground planes, and two feedlines in-between. For circular polarization (CP), quasi-loops are created by etching slots on the outermost ground planes. With this...
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Compact Dual-Polarized Corrugated Horn Antenna for Satellite Communications
PublicationIn this paper, a structure and design procedure of a novel compact dual-polarized corrugated horn antenna with high gain and a stable phase center for satellite communication is presented. The antenna incorporates an Ortho-Mode Transducer (OMT), a mode converter, and a corrugated structure. The compact OMT section is designed to be fed by standard WR-75 waveguides. The proposed compact design utilizes only ten corrugated slots...
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Computationally-efficient design optimisation of antennas by accelerated gradient search with sensitivity and design change monitoring
PublicationElectromagnetic (EM) simulation tools are of primary importance in the design of contemporary antennas. The necessity of accurate performance evaluation of complex structures is a reason why the final tuning of antenna dimensions, aimed at improvement of electrical and field characteristics, needs to be based on EM analysis. Design automation is highly desirable and can be achieved by coupling EM solvers with numerical optimisation...
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Cost-Efficient Bi-Layer Modeling of Antenna Input Characteristics Using Gradient Kriging Surrogates
PublicationOver the recent years, surrogate modeling has been playing an increasing role in the design of antenna structures. The main incentive is to mitigate the issues related to high cost of electromagnetic (EM)-based procedures. Among the various techniques, approximation surrogates are the most popular ones due to their flexibility and easy access. Notwithstanding, data-driven modeling of antenna characteristics is associated with serious...
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Cost‐efficient performance‐driven modelling of multi‐band antennas by variable‐fidelity electromagnetic simulations and customized space mapping
PublicationElectromagnetic (EM) simulations have become an indispensable tool in the design of contemporary antennas. EM‐driven tasks, for example, parametric optimization, entail considerable computational efforts, which may be reduced by employing surrogate models. Yet, data‐driven modelling of antenna characteristics is largely hindered by the curse of dimensionality. This may be addressed using the recently reported domain‐confinement...
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Cost-Efficient Surrogate Modeling of High-Frequency Structures Using Nested Kriging with Automated Adjustment of Model Domain Lateral Dimensions
PublicationSurrogate models are becoming popular tools of choice in mitigating issues related to the excessive cost of electromagnetic (EM)-driven design of high-frequency structures. Among available techniques, approximation modeling is by far the most popular due to its versatility. In particular, the surrogates are exclusively based on the sampled simulation data with no need to involve engineering insight or problem-specific knowledge....
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Design-oriented computationally-efficient feature-based surrogate modelling of multi-band antennas with nested kriging
PublicationDesign of modern antenna structures heavily depends on electromagnetic (EM) simulation tools. EM analysis provides reliable evaluation of increasingly complex designs but tends to be CPU intensive. When multiple simulations are needed (e.g., for parameters tuning), the aggregated simulation cost may become a serious bottleneck. As one possible way of mitigating the issue, the recent literature fosters utilization of faster representations,...
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Design-oriented modeling of antenna structures by means of two-level kriging with explicit dimensionality reduction
PublicationThe employment of full-wave electromagnetic (EM) analysis is a practical necessity in the design of contemporary antenna structures. This is because simpler models are generally not available or of limited accuracy. At the same time, EM-based design is computationally expensive. Consequently, the ways of accelerating tasks such as parametric optimization or uncertainty quantification have to be sought. A possible workaround that...
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Design-Oriented Two-Stage Surrogate Modeling of Miniaturized Microstrip Circuits with Dimensionality Reduction
PublicationContemporary microwave design heavily relies on full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation tools. This is especially the case for miniaturized devices where EM cross-coupling effects cannot be adequately accounted for using equivalent network models. Unfortunately, EM analysis incurs considerable computational expenses, which becomes a bottleneck whenever multiple evaluations are required. Common simulation-based design tasks include...
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Editorial for the special issue on advances in forward and inverse surrogate modeling for high-frequency design
PublicationThe design of modern‐day high‐frequency devices and circuits, including microwave/RF, antenna and photonic components, historically has relied on full‐wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation tools. Initially used for design verification, EM simulations are nowadays used in the design process itself, for example, for finding optimum values of geometry and/or material parameters of the structures of interest. In a growing number of...
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Enhanced-Performance Circularly Polarized MIMO Antenna with Polarization/Pattern Diversity
PublicationDesign of a compact wideband circularly polarized (CP) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with polarization diversity is proposed and characterized for off-body communication. The antenna is based on a simple coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed monopole extension of the microstrip line. The orthogonal field components required by CP are induced using a simply modified right/left side ground plane. In particular, a stub extending...
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Expedited antenna optimization with numerical derivatives and gradient change tracking
PublicationDesign automation has been playing an increasing role in the development of novel antenna structures for various applications. One of its aspects is electromagnetic (EM)-driven design closure, typically applied upon establishing the antenna topology, and aiming at adjustment of geometry parameters to boost the performance figures as much as possible. Parametric optimization is often realized using local methods given usually reasonable...
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Expedited Design Closure of Antenna Input Characteristics by Trust Region Gradient Search and Principal Component Analysis
PublicationOptimization-based parameter tuning has become an inherent part of contemporary antenna design process. For the sake of reliability, it is typically conducted at the level of full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation models. This may incur considerable computational expenses depending on the cost of an individual EM analysis, the number of adjustable variables, the type of task (local, global, single-/multi-objective optimization),...
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Expedited Feature-Based Quasi-Global Optimization of Multi-Band Antenna Input Characteristics with Jacobian Variability Tracking
PublicationDesign of modern antennas relies—for reliability reasons—on full-wave electromagnetic simulation tools. In addition, increasingly stringent specifications pertaining to electrical and field performance, growing complexity of antenna topologies, along with the necessity for handling multiple objectives, make numerical optimization of antenna geometry parameters a highly recommended design procedure. Conventional algorithms, particularly...
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Expedited Globalized Antenna Optimization by Principal Components and Variable-Fidelity EM Simulations: Application to Microstrip Antenna Design
PublicationParameter optimization, also referred to as design closure, is imperative in the development of modern antennas. Theoretical considerations along with rough dimension adjustment through supervised parameter sweeping can only yield initial designs that need to be further tuned to boost the antenna performance. The major challenges include handling of multi-dimensional parameter spaces while accounting for several objectives and...
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Expedited optimization of antenna input characteristics with adaptive Broyden updates
PublicationSimulation-driven adjustment of geometry and/or material parameters is a necessary step in the design of contemporary antenna structures. Due to their topological complexity, other means, such as supervised parameter sweeping, does not usually lead to satisfactory results. On the other hand, rigorous numerical optimization is computationally expensive due to a high cost of underlying full-wave electromagnetic (EM) analyses, otherwise...
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Expedited Yield Optimization of Narrow- and Multi-Band Antennas Using Performance-Driven Surrogates
PublicationUncertainty quantification is an important aspect of engineering design, also pertaining to the development and performance evaluation of antenna systems. Manufacturing tolerances as well as other types of uncertainties, related to material parameters (e.g., substrate permittivity) or operating conditions (e.g., bending) may affect the antenna characteristics. In the case of narrow- or multi-band antennas, this usually leads to...
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Fast Antenna Optimization Using Gradient Monitoring and Variable-Fidelity EM Models
PublicationAccelerated simulation-driven design optimization of antenna structures is proposed. Variable-fidelity electromagnetic (EM) analysis is used as well as the trust-region framework with limited sensitivity updates. The latter are controlled by monitoring the changes of the antenna response gradients. Our methodology is verified using three compact wideband antennas. Comprehensive benchmarking demonstrates its superiority over both...
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Fast Multi-Objective Aerodynamic Optimization Using Sequential Domain Patching and Multifidelity Models
PublicationExploration of design tradeoffs for aerodynamic surfaces requires solving of multi-objective optimization (MOO) problems. The major bottleneck here is the time-consuming evaluations of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model used to capture the nonlinear physics involved in designing aerodynamic surfaces. This, in conjunction with a large number of simulations necessary to yield a set of designs representing the best possible...
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Fast multi-objective design optimization of microwave and antenna structures using data-driven surrogates and domain segmentation
PublicationPurpose Strategies and algorithms for expedited design optimization of microwave and antenna structures in multi-objective setup are investigated. Design/methodology/approach Formulation of the multi-objective design problem oriented towards execution of the population-based metaheuristic algorithm within the segmented search space is investigated. Described algorithmic framework exploit variable fidelity modeling, physics- and...
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Fast multi-objective optimization of antenna structures by means of data-driven surrogates and dimensionality reduction
PublicationDesign of contemporary antenna structures needs to account for several and often conflicting objectives. These are pertinent to both electrical and field properties of the antenna but also its geometry (e.g., footprint minimization). For practical reasons, especially to facilitate efficient optimization, single-objective formulations are most often employed, through either a priori preference articulation, objective aggregation,...
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Fixed Pattern Noise Reduction and Linearity Improvement in Time-Mode CMOS Image Sensors
PublicationIn the paper, a digital clock stopping technique for gain and offset correction in time-mode analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) has been proposed. The technique is dedicated to imagers with massively parallel image acquisition working in the time mode where compensation of dark signal non-uniformity (DSNU) as well as photo-response non-uniformity (PRNU) is critical. Fixed pattern noise (FPN) reduction has been experimentally validated...
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Hybrid‐mode single‐slope ADC with improved linearity and reduced conversion time for CMOS image sensors
PublicationIn the paper, a single‐slope analog‐to‐digital converter (ADC) for integrated CMOS image sensor applications with an improved technique of conversion has been proposed. The proposed hybrid‐mode ADC automatically uses one of the following conversion techniques: time based (i.e. PWM) or voltage based (i.e. single‐slope). During the ADC operation, the clock frequency and reference voltage are modified in order to reduce the conversion...
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Implementation of spatial/polarization diversity for improved-performance circularly polarized multiple-input-multiple-output ultra-wideband antenna
PublicationIn this paper, spatial and polarization diversities are simultaneously implemented in an ultra-wideband (UWB) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna to reduce the correlation between the parallel-placed radiators. The keystone of the antenna is systematically modified coplanar ground planes that enable excitation of circular polarization (CP). To realize one sense of circular polarization as well as ultra-wideband operation,...
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Improved-Efficacy Optimization of Compact Microwave Passives by Means of Frequency-Related Regularization
PublicationElectromagnetic (EM)-driven optimization is an important part of microwave design, especially for miniaturized components where the cross-coupling effects in tightly arranged layouts make traditional (e.g., equivalent network) representations grossly inaccurate. Efficient parameter tuning requires reasonably good initial designs, which are difficult to be rendered for newly developed structures or when re-design for different operating...
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Light-Powered Starter for Micro-Power Boost DC–DC Converter for CMOS Image Sensors
PublicationThe design of a starter for a low-voltage, micro-power boost DC–DC converter intended for powering CMOS image sensors is presented. A unique feature of the starter is extremely low current, below 1 nA, supplying its control circuit. Therefore, a high-voltage (1.3 V) configuration of series-connected photovoltaic diodes available in a standard CMOS process or a small external LED working in photovoltaic mode can be used as an auxiliary...
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Low-Cost Automated Design of Compact Branch-Line Couplers
PublicationBranch-line couplers (BLCs) are important components of wireless communication systems. Conventional BLCs are often characterized by large footprints which make miniaturization an important prerequisite for their application in modern devices. State-of-the-art approaches to design of compact BLCs are largely based on the use of high-permittivity substrates and multi-layer topologies. Alternative methods involve replacement of transmission-line...
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Low-cost data-driven modelling of microwave components using domain confinement and PCA-based dimensionality reduction
PublicationFast data-driven surrogate models can be employed as replacements of computationally demanding full-wave electromagnetic simulations to facilitate the microwave design procedures. Unfortunately, practical application of surrogate modelling is often hindered by the curse of dimensionality and/or considerable nonlinearity of the component characteristics. This paper proposes a simple yet reliable approach to cost-efficient modelling...
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Low-cost performance-driven modelling of compact microwave components with two-layer surrogates and gradient kriging
PublicationUtilization of electromagnetic (EM) simulation tools has become indispensable for reliable evaluation of microwave components. As the cost of an individual analysis may already be considerable, the computational overhead associated with EM-driven tasks that require massive simulations (e.g., optimization) may turn prohibitive. One of mitigation methods is the employment of equivalent network models. Yet, they are incapable of accounting...
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Low-Cost Surrogate Modeling of Miniaturized Microwave Components Using Nested Kriging
PublicationIn the paper, a recently reported nested kriging methodology is employed for modeling of miniaturized microwave components. The approach is based on identifying the parameter space region that contains high-quality designs, and, subsequently, rendering the surrogate in this subset. The results obtained for a miniaturized unequal-power-split rat-race coupler and a compact three-section impedance transformer demonstrate reliability...
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Low-Power Receivers for Wireless Capacitive Coupling Transmission in 3-D-Integrated Massively Parallel CMOS Imager
PublicationThe paper presents pixel receivers for massively parallel transmission of video signal between capacitive coupled integrated circuits (ICs). The receivers meet the key requirements for massively parallel transmission, namely low-power consumption below a single μW, small area of less than 205 μm2, high sensitivity better than 160 mV, and good immunity to crosstalk. The receivers were implemented and measured in a 3-D IC (two face-to-face...
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Nested Kriging Surrogates for Rapid Multi-Objective Optimization of Compact Microwave Components
PublicationA procedure for rapid EM-based multi-objective optimization of compact microwave components is presented. Our methodology employs a recently developed nested kriging modelling to identify the search space region containing the Pareto-optimal designs, and to construct a fast surrogate model. The latter permits determination of the initial Pareto set, further refined using a separate surrogate-assisted process. As an illustration,...
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Nested Kriging with Variable Domain Thickness for Rapid Surrogate Modeling and Design Optimization of Antennas
PublicationDesign of modern antennas faces numerous difficulties, partially rooted in stringent specifications imposed on both electrical and field characteristics, demands concerning various functionalities (circular polarization, pattern diversity, band-notch operation), but also constraints imposed upon the physical size of the radiators. Conducting the design process at the level of full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulations, otherwise...
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On Computationally-Efficient Reference Design Acquisition for Reduced-Cost Constrained Modeling and Re-Design of Compact Microwave Passives
PublicationFull-wave electromagnetic (EM) analysis has been playing a major role in the design of microwave components for the last few decades. In particular, EM tools allow for accurate evaluation of electrical performance of miniaturized structures where strong cross-coupling effects cannot be adequately quantified using equivalent network models. However, EM-based design procedures (parametric optimization, statistical analysis) generate...
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On Inadequacy of Sequential Design of Experiments for Performance-Driven Surrogate Modeling of Antenna Input Characteristics
PublicationDesign of contemporary antennas necessarily involves electromagnetic (EM) simulation tools. Their employment is imperative to ensure evaluation reliability but also to carry out the design process itself, especially, the adjustment of antenna dimensions. For the latter, traditionally used parameter sweeping is more and more often replaced by rigorous numerical optimization, which entails considerable computational expenses, sometimes...
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Performance-Driven Surrogate Modeling of High-Frequency Structures
PublicationThe development of modern high-frequency structures, including microwave and antenna components, heavily relies on full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation models. Notwithstanding, EM-driven design entails considerable computational expenses. This is especially troublesome when solving tasks that require massive EM analyzes, parametric optimization and uncertainty quantification be-ing representative examples. The employment of...