Simultaneous Transmit and Receive Antenna with Built in Self-Test Unit: Analysis of Trace Error Simulation

The capstone portion of this project was to use the established STaR antennas and add a Built in Self-Test system to ensure the quality of the signals being received. This part of the project required a MatLab simulation to be built, a layout created, and a PCB designed for fabrication. In theory, the test BiST unit will allow the gain and delay of the transmitted signal and then cancel out unneeded interference for the received signal. However, this design required multiple paths to maintain the same lengths to keep the signals in phase for comparison. The purpose of this thesis is to show the potential drop-offs of the quality of the signals from being out of phase due to the wires that should be similar, being off by a certain percentage. This project will calculate the theoretical delay of all wires being out of sync and then add this delay to the established MatLab simulation. This report will show the relationship between the error of the received variables and what the actual generated values. And, the last part of the document will demonstrate the simulation by creating a signal and comparing it to its received counterpart. The end result of the study showed that the percent error between what is seen and what is expected is near insignificant and, hence, not an issue with regards to the quality of the project.