Modern antennas utilize MIMO technology in order to meet consumer demands for high data rates. As such, throughput is a required metric when evaluating one antenna design versus another and simulating device performance in a realistic scenario.
Traditional antenna design metrics for SISO and diversity antennas include S-Parameters, gain, mean effective gain, and efficiency. These metrics primarily measure stand-alone antenna performance and don't fully provide the needed insight for current applications. In order to achieve high data rates, engineers need to combine their antenna design with a channel model and compute throughput. Throughput is a more meaningful metric because it accounts for the environment's multi-path behavior where the antenna is going to operate. This MicroApps presentation from IMS 2018 demonstrates the latest capabilities in throughput simulation.
