How to create animated plots for antenna gain patterns

I am curious how I can create an animated plot for an antenna gain pattern, preferably a polar plot. I essentially want to parameterize the gain and phase with a time variable.

Answer 1

[Yatharth]

Hi Russell,

I understand that you want to create an animated polar plot for an antenna gain pattern.

To create an animated plot for an antenna, gain pattern with a time variable, you can use the “polarplot” function in MATLAB along with a loop to update the gain and phase values at each time step. Here's an example code snippet to get you started:

% Define time variable
t = linspace(0, 2*pi, 100);

% Initialize figure and axes
figure;
ax = polaraxes;

% Loop over time steps
for i = 1:length(t)
    % Compute gain and phase values at current time step
    gain = sin(t(i));  % Replace with your own gain function
    phase = cos(t(i));  % Replace with your own phase function

    % Plot polar pattern
    polarplot(ax, [0 phase], [0 gain]);

    % Customize plot appearance
    ax.ThetaZeroLocation = 'top';  % Set theta zero location
    ax.RLim = [0 1];  % Set radial limits

    % Pause to control animation speed
    pause(0.1);

    % Clear current plot
    cla(ax);
end

In this example, the gain and phase values are computed based on the current time step “t(i)”. You can replace the “sin(t(i))” and “cos(t(i))” functions with your own functions that parameterize the gain and phase with time.

Here is the documentation for Polar Plots https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/polar-plots.html

I hope this helps!