Abstract
In both industrial and scientific frameworks, free and open source software codes create novel and interesting opportunities in computational electromagnetics. One of the possible applications, which usually requires a large set of numerical tests, is related to antenna design. Despite the well-known advantages offered by open source software, there are several critical points that restrict its practical application. First, the knowledge of the open source programs is often limited. Second, by using open source packages it is sometimes not easy to obtain results with a high level of confidence, and to integrate open source modules in the production workflow. In the paper, a discussion about open source programs for antenna design is carried out. Furthermore, some preliminary numerical tests are presented and discussed, also in comparison with those obtained by means of commercial software. Results are related to the simulation of various typologies of antennas in order to assess the capabilities of open source software in different configurations. The presented comparisons show that, despite the abovementioned limitations, the examined open source packages have similar performance with respect to their commercial counterparts.