AWR Design Environment Version 2008 Boasts More Than 100 Enhancements
By AWR

Developers of high-frequency design software face the multi-faceted challenge of continually enhancing their products while ensuring that as capabilities grow, their complexity does not. This has been particularly important for AWR, since it has been committed since its inception to providing an open environment that lets users integrate third-party software tools into the “AWR Design Environment”, while simultaneously adding new capabilities to tools within the platform, enhancing existing ones, and ensuring that its user interface remains highly intuitive. With Version 2008 of the design environment, AWR has made significant steps forward in all three areas. For example, sweeping changes have been made to the user interface that dramatically increases its flexibility for the user as well as the unique APLAC harmonic balance (HB) analysis software is now included as an additional HB engine within the Microwave Office design suite. Overall, more than 100 improvements have been made throughout the design environment.

The most obvious changes to the Microwave Office software for both new users and existing customers are in the user interface, which more than ever exploits the potential of the Windows operating system to allow a high degree of customization. The changes make it easier for users to customize the design environment to suit personal preferences, with the goal of streamlining various design tasks to save time and optimizing the screen space available for design. In short, they let users “move things around” to handle bigger designs more quickly.

For example, the project, elements, and layout tabs, as well as the status window are now fully dockable as well as “floating”, the choice being easily invoked by clicking a push-pin icon in the upper right hand portion of the screen. Also, the element browser window can now be moved out of the main area while remaining viewable. When docked, the windows can be placed in an “auto-hide” mode that makes them disappear shortly after clicking somewhere else on the screen. The windows then become tabs along the edge of the main window. To restore a window, the user simply clicks or hovers over the tab (Figure 1). All windows and tabs can also be opened or closed together.

In addition, toolbars can be docked along any edge of the main window or floated. When the main window is too small to display all of the toolbars, they are minimized and a corresponding link icon is added to the end of the toolbar. Pressing the icon displays a list of the commands and provides a way to access the customization features as well. All of the menus are enhanced to include icons on every toolbar along with a “themed” highlighting style. To enter the customization area, the user right clicks on the toolbar (menu) area and chooses “Customize” or selects the “tools” menu (Figure 2). The dialog boxes that appear when an option is chosen allow commands to be dragged from the dialog boxes’ Command tab and onto menus or toolbars. The dialog box remains open and displays more functions than previous versions. Right-clicking toolbar items after they are open allows them to be edited or their images changed by selecting from an array of standard images or pasting-in any bit-mapped image of 16 x 16 pixels or less. It’s also now possible to rearrange toolbar and menu items by simply dragging them to their new location. Pressing the Alt key while clicking on an icon removes it from the toolbar.

The appearance of the overall interface can be switched back and forth to appear much like Microsoft Office 2000 or 2003. A tabbed workspace environment can be created as well that adds a tab for every open window for quick recall of each one. Other enhancements to the interface include doubling the number of parameters that can be displayed on the tuner from 12 to 24, greater flexibility in viewing objects three-dimensionally such as cut planes, and enhanced ability to place windows in other windows, generate new plots such as any measurement v another and so on..

APLAC Harmonic Balance (HB) within Microwave Office
This foundry-approved RF simulation capability, which was an integrated but only available as an option in the design environment prior to Version 2008, now comes as a standard HB engine, for customers who require and license the “harmonic balance” capabilities of the Microwave Office design environment. The APLAC engine is based on a proprietary implementation of harmonic balance analysis, and is tailored for designers of complex, extremely nonlinear circuits and complements the frequency-domain simulation capabilities of Microwave Office. It has been fine-tuned based on more than 15 years of experience in RFIC design at Nokia and many device manufacturers, and has been used in the design of more than 30 percent of all mobile phone RFICs.

APLAC combines harmonic balance and time-domain analysis (optional add-on to Microwave Office software) and provides fast, accurate results while using less computer memory than traditional microwave harmonic balance techniques regardless of circuit complexity. The harmonic balance engine offers both the “piecewise” approach for circuits with a few non-linear devices, as well as a “nodal” approach for circuits with tens to thousands of nonlinear devices. It also provides time-domain simulation with frequency-dependent components, supports S parameters in the time domain, and uses the same models as the harmonic balance engine.

Other New Features in the Microwave Office Suite
In addition to the enhancements mentioned above, Microwave Office software benefits from dozens of other improvements implemented in Version 2008. For example, it now incorporates an interface to the popular ICED IC design and verification software, along with its existing support for Mentor Graphics Calibre. The decision to include ICED was based on recommendations by foundries with which AWR has relationships, that indicated the tool has become extremely popular. Other significant features include:

• ACE™ automatic circuit extraction technology, which is integrated within Microwave Office and reduces interconnect design time, can now be used with transmission lines in addition to AWR’s Intelligent Net (INet) routing technology.
• EM simulators, extractors, and ACE can now tune, optimize, and perform yield analysis.
• DXF and GDSII files can be directly imported in the electromagnetic (EM) editor rather than first being imported into the layout.
• EXTRACT blocks can be used at all levels of hierarchical design.
• Multi-line equations are now supported.
• Parameterized subcircuits layouts can now be used as part of the overall design, including tuning, optimization, and yield analysis.
• New layout versus schematic (LVS) viewer that includes schematic and layout cross-probing.
• New elements, more than 100 new models for APLAC, and new measurements.
• The ability to plot any measurement versus another measurement (such as power-added efficiency versus output power).

Since the last major release, AWR has added advanced process design kits for TriQuint Semiconductor, WIN Semiconductors, and UMS, with more planned for the coming months.

Enhancements to AWR’s Visual System Simulator
Version 2008 also brings enhancements to AWR’s Visual System Simulator (VSS), which was integrated within the design environment a few years ago. This software suite helps optimize the end-to-end design of communications systems by allowing the impact of “real-world” signal impairments and other factors to be evaluated early in the design cycle when they can be most effectively dealt with. It is a major improvement over the tried-and-true Excel spreadsheets that until VSS software was introduced were the only choice. Spreadsheets neglect to account for some major factors that if overlooked can significantly degrade performance. VSS provides the tools necessary to create the best system architecture by optimizing each of its components from the behavioral through component levels (in conjunction with Microwave Office software or AWR’s Analog Office software), and then using actual device measurements to validate the final design. Several key enhancements to VSS include:

• RF Budget Analysis tool now uses a circuit solver and expands the range of supported topologies.
• New measurements.
• Improved thermal noise modeling (now circuit-solver based).
• Backward and forward propagation of time step that eliminates the need for manual configuration.
• Automatic data alignment that facilitates bit error rate (BER) simulations.
• Co-simulation with Microwave Office software, including the APLAC HB software engine.

Like Microwave Office, the VSS design environment also boasts the improved user-interface as well as a host of other enhancement to various key functions. More information about AWR Design Environment Version 2008 can be found at our website.

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