Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2007 - (Page 52)

52 PRODUCT FEATURE — EM SOLVER AXIEM pioneers the future of EM technology now enables EM to be part of the overall design ﬂow decision-making process C ompetition to attract consumers in the wireless communications market is driving incredible innovation in the design of feature-rich devices in compact packages. Geometries are shrinking and circuit densities are increasing, while at the same time application frequency and bandwidth grows. In order to reduce size and weight, and to improve the cost-effectiveness of the module, it has become necessary to migrate to fully integrated monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) that include RF functions. As a result, designers’ tools and ﬂows are being pushed harder and harder, forcing highfrequency electromagnetic (EM) technology to move above and beyond where it is today. Until recently, EM effects were second-, third- or even fourth-order effects to consider for successful IC design. With the increase in wireless and RF/microwave products in both military and consumer markets, and the effect of Moore’s law in shrinking overall footprint size and increasing complexity/frequency/ bandwidth, EM effects have often become ﬁrst-order effects that must be accounted for. Today, every design requires some sort of EM analysis, but the technology has not kept pace with the demands of users who now must employ EM analysis as a design process diagnostic utility rather than the traditional back-end veriﬁcation tool. AWR, an innovative company founded by microwave engineers who are committed to providing a better way to design, has developed a completely new approach. The AXIEM™ product is a pioneering technology in the ﬁeld of EM that delivers speed, capacity, and accuracy to the designers of microwave/RF products. The solver now enables EM to be part of the overall design ﬂow and, more signiﬁcantly, the design ﬂow decision-making process, rather than simply an endlessly painful, back-end veriﬁcation, go/no-go loop. Figure 1: Nera ﬁlter pass band current: pass band current (left) and |S11| & |S21| simulated versus measured data. of the EM analysis enabled by AXIEM, makes it a true design diagnostic tool that can help designers increase their productivity and accelerate time-to-market. Unlike other EM analysis tools, whose speed versus accuracy is effectively hard-coded, AXIEM offers the user extensive control and ﬂexibility. EM solvers themselves are actually complex beasts that are combinations of advanced mathematical techniques: a Green’s function generator, meshing, and the actual matrix solver algorithm. The accuracy-speed-complexity trade-off really comes down to what is the weakest link. The AXIEM technology was developed to tackle the challenges of accuracy, speed and design complexity by looking at the constituent pieces, and making each best-in-class. Solver technology While three-dimensional (3D) planar EM technology is not new in and of itself, what is new and groundbreaking about the AXIEM technology is that it has been expressly pioneered to overcome some limitations of existing 3D planar formulations that rely on the Sommerfeld integral (or similar) for delivering speed of simulation, at the cost of accuracy and dynamic range. AXIEM’s innovative MoM solver engine uses a proprietary technique that is similar to the fast multipole method, yet adapted for full-wave analysis. As a result, the AXIEM solver scales similarly to the fast multipole method, which is the order of N Log (N), as opposed to the order N3, as is the case with most existing MoM solvers. The solver can be orders of magnitude faster for its simulation speed on very large structures as compared with more conventional MoM codes. This capacity advantage is intended to enable EM analysis of problems beyond the scope of current commercially available EM technologies. As an example, Figure 1 shows the results from AXIEM for a ﬁlter design from Nera ASA, Bergen, Norway, including both pass band current and S-parameter measured versus simulated data. Here the solver was set to nominally weight speed over accuracy which resulted in less than 2 min/frequency for 3900 unknowns on a single processor. Furthermore, given that the results of AXIEM will normally be employed by a nonlinear circuit simulator, accurate DC solutions (broadband results) are also a given. Meshing technology Hybrid meshing The AXIEM product employs an intelligent hybrid surface mesh consisting of rectangles and triangles. A hybrid mesh provides signiﬁcant advantages to using a purely rectangular mesh as these elements are neither reasonable nor efﬁcient for arbitrary geometries such as curved or tapered metal traces. The hybrid approach uses rectangles where most effective and efﬁcient, and then embraces triangular elements in regions where a rectangular mesh is an illconditioned choice. The AXIEM meshing process is fully automated. Its intelligent meshing process uses heuristic knowledge of the solution to automatically create a mesh that is optimized to provide the greatest accuracy while minimizing the number of unknowns required, thereby delivering speed of solution coupled with unparalleled accuracy — all at a click of the mouse. The EM solver’s hybrid meshing technology weds the efﬁciency of rectangular AXIEM delivers unique features for real-world designs Unique to the AXIEM product are features that are necessary for real-world designs, like true thick metal, enclosure-less, non-gridded and non-Manhattan structures, and internal auto-grounded ports. As a whole, AXIEM delivers advancements in solver technology, meshing algorithms and to the overall design work ﬂow. The accuracy, speed and capacity Microwave Engineering Europe ● October 2007 ● www.mwee.com 052-053_MWEE.indd 52 21/09/07 14:35:34 http://www.mwee.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2007

Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2007 Contents Comment News CMOS RF: Si-On-Sapphire Goes Mainstream Cover Feature: New Data Protection Concept for UHF RFID Tags CMOS RF: RF Design Team Touts CMOS Spin for 3G PAs Wireless HID – Are You Following the Standard to Another “Average” Product Development? Phase Optimisation of the RF Front-End Direct Synthesis of UWB-WiMedia Signal Generation 4G Chips to Target 700 MHz Applications Femtocells Mobilize to Fight Wi-Fi in the Home Products Product Feature: AXIEM Pioneers the Future of EM Technology Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - October 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.