Agilent Technologies Debuts Breakthroughs in Power Amplifier Module Design for Next Release of Advanced Design System

Agilent Technologies Inc. has unveiled new technologies and breakthroughs for RF power amplifier design. These capabilities and more will be part of the next major release of Agilent's flagship Advanced Design System.

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—at IMS 2012/IEEE MTT-S (Booth 1015), June 19-21, in Montréal, Canada. A range of premier partner solutions will be available on Agilent Avenue and throughout the event.

Agilent's new technologies and breakthroughs for RF power amplifier design include:

• Side-by-side finite element method 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 Agilent EEsof's IC-CAP device modeling software, which enables more accurate 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 3-D 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.

• 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.

U.S. Pricing and Availability

Agilent's ADS 2012 is expected to ship in August.