Microwave Engineering Europe - January/February 2008 - (Page 16)

16 COVER FEATURE — RF SIP DESIGN The RF-System-In-Package trend — efﬁcient design with Advanced Design System 2008 By Hee-Soo Lee, How-Siang Yap and Dean Nicholson, Agilent EEsof EDA s our electronic appliance world becomes increasingly small, compact, and wireless, electronic component vendors compete to squeeze more wireless functionality into ever smaller packages at lower costs to capture the high-volume consumer wireless market. A popular enabling technology is RF-system in package (SiP), which includes multiple bare IC dies, embedded passive, and SMT components integrated into a small package and designed to perform multiple functions. RFIC vendors are now going beyond selling individual ICs to delivering multifunction RF-SiP modules such as wireless transceivers, radio, and front-end modules. Compared with system-on-chip (SOC) integration, SiP offers signiﬁcantly faster time to market at lower cost and risk. The trade-off is a slightly bigger but still acceptable package size. Agilent EEsof EDA has designed the latest, 2008 release of its ﬂagship RFmixed-signal EDA software platform, Advanced Design System (ADS) to include capabilities for efﬁcient RF-SiP design. This article describes a high-performance microwave down-converter SiP used in radar application as an example to illustrate improved RF-SiP design productivity within the new Advanced Design System 2008. RF-SiP example Figure 1 shows a photo of a quadrupled LO down converter SiP, which downconverts RF from 22-24 GHz to an IF of 1950 MHz using a quadrupled LO through two multipliers. The signal path is shown in Figure 2. The active ampliﬁers, mixers, and multipliers are off-the-shelf MMICs, while the passive matching interconnects, power dividers and attenuators are custom implemented on thin-ﬁlm alumina substrate. The whole RF-subsystem is packaged into a 10- x 10-mm TOPS (“The Other Packaging System”) package, whose cross-section is shown in Figure 3. Designing this RFsubsystem is efﬁcient and fast through use of a mix-and-match approach, using proven designs and best-in-class technologies. A Design tool requirements for RF SiP To design RF SiPs efﬁciently to meet RF SiP performance and cost requirements, the design tools must have the following three capabilities to address challenging complex RF SiP designs. • System-circuit-physical co-design and co-optimization in one simulation environment. This means the simulator must seamlessly handle system linear/non-linear architectural blocks represented interchangeably by behavioral models, circuit level schematics, measured data or physical electromagnetic simulation. • Integrated full 3D-EM simulation for incorporating embedded passives, packaging, and 3D-interconnect in the RF SiP design ﬂow. • Multi-layer layout design and visualization capability. System-circuit-physical co-design The RF-SiP design starts with the toplevel system architecture using behavioral models. Next, the behavioral models are replaced with more accurate circuit level representation where available or Figure 1: Quadrupled LO RF-System In Package (SiP). Figure 2: RF, LO and IF signal path through RF SiP. Figure 3: Cross section of TOPS package for RF-SiP. Microwave Engineering Europe ● January/February 2008 ● www.mwee.com 016_017_018_MWEE.indd 16 22/01/08 14:59:35 http://www.mwee.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Microwave Engineering Europe - January/February 2008

Microwave Engineering Europe - January/February 2008 Contents News Comment Radio: Raising the Bar for the Radio: Making 802.11n Work Cover Feature: The RF-System-In-Package Trend - Efficient Design with Advanced Design System 2008 Wireless Sensor Networks: The Zigbee PRO Feature Set: More of a Good Thing Very Fast Measurements of Wireless Devices with Small Antennas in Reverberation Chambers WiMAX Update 2008 Bridging the Gap from the CMOS DSP to the Antenna in OFDM Systems Products Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - January/February 2008

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