Design and test firms address microwave challenges
2009 IMS exhibits cover design and simulation through high-speed production test.
Rick Nelson, Editor in Chief -- Test & Measurement World, 7/1/2009 2:00:00 AM
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Exhibits at last month’s IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS; see "From microwave microscopy to 110-GHz analysis") ran the gamut from design and simulation through high-speed production test.
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On the design side, IMS newcomer Synopsys previewed its Galaxy Custom Designer 2009.06 release, which the company introduced a week after the show. Ed Lechner, director of product marketing for custom design at Synopsys, said in an interview at IMS that the product builds on the Custom Designer version the company released last September to increase productivity for custom designs in an open environment as process geometries shrink below 45 nm.
 The 3020 Series PXI instruments include integrated dual-channel arbitrary waveform generators and target R&D, design verification, and manufacturing test of RF components and systems. Courtesy of Aeroflex. |
Custom Designer provides hierarchical mixed text and schematic representations, and it supports cross-probing and schematic annotation with simulation results. It forms the basis of a complete implementation, verification, circuit-simulation, and analysis flow, integrating with other Synopsys tools such as HSpice RF, which supports harmonic-balance and shooting-Newton techniques for analysis of weakly and strongly nonlinear devices, respectively. It also supports envelope analysis for complex modulated RF waveforms and S-parameter analysis for small-signal, linear components.
On the test side, Aeroflex announced it has expanded its PXI test platform with the addition of two 3020 Series RF signal generators that target R&D, design verification, and manufacturing test of RF components and systems. The addition of the 3021C and 3026C extends the output power range of the 3020 Series to +17 dBm for frequencies up to 3 GHz and 6 GHz, respectively.
In addition, Giga-tronics highlighted its new 2500B series 50-GHz microwave signal generators, which deliver a fast switching speed of typically less than 500 µs for a 1-GHz step and as fast as 100 µs for small steps—thereby facilitating high-throughput test applications. Sales and marketing VP Malcolm E. Levy said that the instruments switch more than 10 times faster than their nearest low-noise competitors.
In the microwave world, you won’t find the automated test-generation tools that you find in the digital world to assist in production test. Nevertheless, design and test companies are working together.
A pioneer in that area is Agilent Technologies, which has established links between its line-up of instruments and its Advanced Design System microwave design and simulation tool. At this year’s show, Agilent highlighted nonlinear measurements. Also at the show, EDA firm AWR introduced its AWR Connected for Rohde & Schwarz, which integrates the capabilities of R&S WinIQSIM2 simulation software within AWR’s Visual System Simulator (VSS) software to support cross-domain analysis. Earlier this year, AWR and Anritsu announced that AWR’s Microwave Office design software ships with Anritsu’s 70-GHz VectorStar MS4640A vector network analyzers. At IMS, Anritsu debuted its 110-GHz VectorStar Broadband ME7828A vector network analyzer, which also supports Microwave Office.
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Test equipment with new design brings new features. Most important is its reading accuracy to ensure high quality safety.
Test and Measurement - 2009-1-10 03:33:36 EDT
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