14 June 2012

Agilent debuts new technologies in PA module design for next release of ADS EDA software

Agilent Technologies Inc of Santa Clara, CA, USA has unveiled new technologies and developments for RF power amplifier design that will be part of the next major release of its flagship Advanced Design System electronic design automation (EDA) software for RF, microwave and high-speed digital applications.

Agilent will demonstrate ADS 2012—along with a range of solutions for everything from circuit-level modeling through system verification for general RF, microwave, 4G communications, and aerospace/defense applications — in booth 1015 at the 2012 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS) in Montréal, Canada (19-21 June). A range of premier partner solutions will be available on Agilent Avenue and throughout the event.

Agilent’s new developments for RF power amplifier design include:

• side-by-side finite-element method (FEM) electromagnetic simulation of different technologies to analyze electromagnetic interactions between ICs and interconnects, wire bond and flip-chip solder bumps in typical multichip RF power amplifier modules;
• model support for the new artificial neural network-based Agilent NeuroFET model, extracted by IC-CAP device modeling software of Agilent’s EEsof EDA division, which enables more accurate field-effect transistor (FET) modeling and simulation results (for high-power GaN FET amplifiers, for example);
• improved integration with Electromagnetic Professional software (three-dimensional EM components from EMPro can now be saved as database cells for use directly in ADS);
• the immediate beta release of the new ADS electro-thermal simulator to select customers (based on a full 3D thermal solver natively integrated into ADS, this new capability incorporates dynamic temperature effects to improve accuracy in ‘thermally aware’ circuit simulation results);
• enhancements to the ADS Load Pull DesignGuide (such as adding mismatch simulation to indicate device or amplifier sensitivity to load VSWR or phase angle);and 
• enhancements to the Amplifier DesignGuide (including extensive updates that make it easy to see amplifier performance at a specific output power or a specific amount of gain compression).

Agilent’s ADS 2012 software release is expected to ship in August.

Tags: Agilent EDA software

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