Automaticphysics Kicad-EMS

KiCad plugin · FDTD field solver

Antenna simulation
inside the KiCad
workflow.

Antenna Designer adds one button to the PCB editor, and behind it a field solver that meshes the layout you already have. Simulate the board — before it is committed to copper.

Install the plugin View source
The 3D far-field radiation pattern of a 2.45 GHz board antenna: a directivity surface, coloured blue at the floor of the scale through to red at the peak, standing around the board and its copper.
Directivity 2.45 GHz Drag to rotate

01  Geometry

Straight from the board

Copper, stack-up and drills are read from the layout itself; you only mark where the antenna is fed. There is no second model to keep in sync — the mesh beside this is the one the solver stepped the field on, built from the KiCad file alone.

A 3D view of the meshed board: an FR-4 substrate with the front and back copper layers on it, drawn as the blocks of cells the solver discretised them into.
Drag to rotate

02  Sweep

Tune it before you build it

Sweep the band and see where the antenna actually resonates, not where the calculator said it would — or scan a dimension and let the solver find the length that lands it on frequency.

A screen capture of KiCad with the Antenna Designer plugin open: dragging a dimension across its range redraws the inverted-F antenna's meander on the board at every step.
Antenna Designer · dimension scan KiCad PCB Editor

03  Report

Every result in one place

Every run comes back with the whole picture: impedance and its Smith locus, return loss, VSWR, gain and efficiency, the principal planes, and the far-field pattern beside them in 3D. Nothing to plot or assemble afterwards.

A screen capture of the report the solver writes: the 3D radiation pattern of the board on the left, and on the right a column of plots — Smith chart, return loss, VSWR, antenna metrics — scrolling past.
Simulation report 2.45 GHz board antenna

Install

One package,
then a button
in pcbnew.

KiCad 9.0 or later, on Windows or Linux (x86-64) or macOS (Apple Silicon). One package carries the solver for all three, and the plugin runs whichever belongs to the machine it starts on.

Plugin and Content Manager Download

  1. Download AntennaDesigner-<ver>-pcm.zip.

  2. In KiCad: Plugin and Content Manager → Install from File…, and pick the zip.

  3. Restart KiCad. An antenna button appears on the PCB toolbar.