The MATLAB Campus-Wide Access at Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) offers more than access to software. It also provides direct support for teachers and researchers through engineers who help connect the tools to real academic work.

When Koppány Ákos Kiss, a Customer Success Engineer at SciEngineer, reached out to Attila Géczy from the Department of Electronics Technology (ETT), their first step was to look at the course syllabus.

That conversation led to a semester-long collaboration that gave every student access to industry-grade PCB antenna simulation tools, without increasing the professor’s workload.

Challenge

Attila Géczy had been teaching PCB design for years, with topics covering electromagnetic compatibility and practical antennas for IoT applications. The theoretical foundations of his course were solid, but he felt a growing gap between what students learned and what they would encounter on the job.

Students typically left the course with a strong grasp of the theory and practice with the basic EDA flow, but limited experience with the tools the RF and PCB industry actually uses: the workflow of setting up a simulation, running a parameter sweep, reading the results, and iterating on a design.

Updating course material to close this gap is challenging. Developing a new lab exercise from scratch takes time that is very scarce for academics. And finding a ready-made example that fits both the technical level of the course and its specific learning objectives is rarely an easy task.

The PLA-based biodegradable PCB topic is also discussed
in the international SUSTAIN-E Summer School on sustainable electronics.

Solution

As part of the support structure included in the university’s MATLAB Campus-Wide Access, the first step was mapping the course syllabus topic by topic. The goal was to identify where simulation could reinforce lecture content and where MATLAB-based tools could introduce something new: exposure to workflows and technologies used in industry.

A clear opportunity emerged around antenna design and radiation pattern analysis. The agreed scenario was to simulate the radiation characteristics of a USB dongle-shaped PCB antenna, then optimize its geometry on a modified board to meet target specifications. The example sits exactly at the intersection of topics the course already covered — PCB design, material science, RF-theory, numerical methods, and design iteration — while reflecting a realistic engineering workflow.

A published MathWorks example, a compact PCB antenna for USB dongle and BLE applications in the 2.4 GHz ISM band, served as the starting point. The key modification was to let students alter the board dimensions and substrate material (dielectric constant), which detunes the antenna and requires re-optimization using MATLAB’s built-in optimization tools. This single change transforms a static demonstration into an active design exercise. Students observe how a real-world parameter change cascades through the geometry, the S-parameters, and the radiation pattern, and they use the optimizer to bring the design back into specification.

The collaboration continued with a guest lecture at the university by Koppány Ákos Kiss. Alongside an overview of how MathWorks supports academic teaching and research, the full antenna simulation workflow was presented live, including modeling choices, the optimization process, and its role in real product development.

After the lecture, Attila Géczy selected a group of students and gave them the codebase as a voluntary assignment. Their task was to build a complete lab exercise around it, including instructions, guiding questions, and assessment criteria. They received extra course credits for their work.

Working through the material themselves, the students produced a polished, ready-to-use lab document that could be used directly with the next cohort. The exercise was further extended by introducing a novel PCB substrate.

The sustainability-driven research of PLA-based biodegradable electronics is a hot topic, and the students were able to optimize and compare the antenna design around this new substrate type, developed in the Desire4EU Horizon EIC Pathfinder project. The novel substrate also introduced new considerations in PCB design, making the exercise relevant to ongoing research questions.

Results

Starting the following semester, the PCB antenna simulation exercise will become a part of the lab curriculum, used by every student in the course.

The collaboration delivered concrete outcomes on all sides:

• Students worked through a realistic PCB antenna design and optimization problem using professional simulation tools, leaving the lab with both theoretical understanding and hands-on experience.
• The top students who developed the lab material deepened their own mastery of the subject, and earned course credits for it, in the meanwhile adding value to sustainability research.
• Attila Géczy modernized a key part of the course with minimal additional effort. By allowing students to vary the dielectric properties of the board in simulation, the exercise connects directly to real research questions around how non-standard materials affect antenna performance. This creates a clear link between classroom learning and active R&D work that off-the-shelf examples could not provide.

Summary

A single conversation about a course syllabus triggered a series of changes that modernized an electromagnetics lab curriculum, challenged advanced students with real design work, and created a direct bridge between classroom simulation and real-world sustainable PCB research.

About the author

Attila Géczy is a habilitated associate professor and a candidate for professor in electronics technology. He is working at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Dept. of Electronics Technology since 2009. He is the leader of the Sustainable Electronics Research Group at BME, member of the Sustainability Committee of BME, and the president of IMAPS Hungary.

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