Antenna Design Methodology for Remote Keyless Entry: The Effects of the Human Body and Vehicular Antenna Positions on Coverage

In this era of technologies, Remote Keyless Entry (RKE) system has become an integral part of motor vehicles. Over the years, a lot of functionalities have been added to RKE systems. To achieve functional communication between key-fob antennas and vehicular receiving antennas, it is necessary to analyze the impact of a human body as well as the receiving antenna placements on the vehicle’s body. Taking these variations into account during the antenna development phase becomes expensive and tedious since achieving an efficient design would require several iterations, testing, and modification, in the design. Hence, Computational Electromagnetic (CEM) techniques become a feasible solution to explore such scenarios and adopt necessary modifications as needed. This paper introduces a methodological process of designing RKE antennas using 3D CEM Simulation tool; namely Altair Feko. Moreover, the presented methodology includes an analysis of variations of remote keyless entry system’s radiation characteristics while placed in the vicinity of the human body. The effects of the vehicular receiving antenna position on the RKE system’s coverage are also investigated and analyzed. This paper studies the RKE system’s performance not only at 315 MHz but also at 434MHz for universal vehicle usages.