Surrogate-based Design and Tuning Methods for RF/Microwave Devices

RF/Microwave devices are mission-critical components for communication systems. Using three-dimensional full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulators to design those devices is considered a must for most microwave/RF engineers today. Since today's desktop workstations outperform supercomputers of years ago, widely available commercial EM simulators solve those practical problems on low-cost desktop computers. At the same time, the communication industry faces increasing design challenges in function and frequency integration, miniaturization, and multiple tight performance requirements for microwave/RF components. This contributes to extreme time costs in EM-based design. The key to efficient design is surrogate-based approaches for now and future. In this paper, recent advances in surrogate related techniques including sampling, modelling, and optimization are reviewed with applications in complex microwave/RF structure design, post-production tuning, and yield design. The focus of these methods is to achieve fast design/tuning/modelling without sacrificing accuracy.