Agilent Technologies Inc. has announced breakthroughs in its core electronic design automation (EDA) frequency-domain simulation technologies for fast and accurate RFIC, MMIC, and RF system-in-package (SiP) design. Simulation speed improvements of up to 50 times have been achieved for large and complex circuits used in wireless communications products and aerospace and defense applications.
In RFIC, MMIC and RF SiP development, a single design iteration can cost up to a million dollars. The simulation technology breakthroughs in Agilent’s EDA software will help eliminate these costly iterations by allowing designers to quickly and accurately predict performance prior to fabrication, according to the company.
Agilent says customers have observed good results with test circuits containing thousands of transistors, such as transceiver ICs for wireless local area network (WLAN) applications. Extracted view simulations, which include additional physical components that represent IC parasitics, are said to have been successfully completed on circuits containing hundreds of thousands of these components. In some cases, these circuits could not be simulated with previous technologies. Now, the company claims these very large and highly complex circuits simulate and converge quickly, even when using default simulation settings.
Agilent’s enhanced simulation technologies will be included in the company’s next release of its Advanced Design System (ADS) and RF Design Environment (RFDE) simulation software packages. Agilent ADS is said to offer a complete set of system and circuit simulation technology and instrument links for RF and microwave design in a single, integrated flow. Agilent RFDE is an RF EDA software environment that tightly integrates leading RF simulation technologies from Agilent ADS into the Cadence Design System industry-standard analog and mixed-signal design flow.
Agilent Technologies Inc. :
www.agilent.com.
