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J&R Microwave Solutions

J&R Microwave Solutions Successfully Designs Complex Active Power Splitter MMIC with AWR Software

Customer Background

Based in Toulouse, France, J&R Microwave Solutions Ltd. (J&R Microwave) is a design house specializing in the metallic module modeling and GaAs MMIC design. Founded in 2006, J&R Microwave provides design and modeling services to industry-leading companies to help them reduce their time to market window.

J&R Microwave has designed MMICs from S-band through Ka-band for both receiver and transmit chains. With the success of its DC to 40 GHz traveling wave MMIC, J&R Microwave is the premier design house for wide bandwidth MMICs. The company has also developed high performance wideband designs from C- to Ku-band and Ku- to Ka-band.

The Design Challenge

An active power divider has been designed to ease the extended dynamic range of the detector log video amplifier (EDLVA) system's complexity by replacing the low noise amplifier (LNA) and the passive power divider with a single component. For extra-wide bandwidth, high gain and post-fabrication gain control, the selection of a cascade configuration was made. Therefore key challenges of the design have been accommodating a pair of 10 FETs in a cascade configuration along with presenting the RF/DC networks in a compact layout, and yet achieving the targeted performances.

The Solution

Thanks to AWR for its accuracy of the models, Microwave Office and AXIEM™ software deliver a high level of confidence in the simulation of such a complex MMIC device. Since the schematic and the layout use the same database, Microwave Office provides an incredible advantage by speeding up the layout since any changes made in the layout are automatically updated in the schematic and thus, the simulation results. In addition, AXIEM enables the ability to EM simulate the entire structure and to optimize the EM structure to avoid unwanted cross-couplings.

J&R Microwave's value proposition is to offer GaAs design know-how to industry-leading companies, first-pass design success and time-to-market advantage. All of these are very important factors for J&R Microwave to attract new customers and so we selected AWR tools for the following reasons:

1. The user-friendly interface of the software makes it easy to learn and fast to handle.
2. The schematic and the layout are two different views that use the same database. This Microwave Office software feature scores highest with respect to benefits, since the MMIC designer can easily manipulate the layout and then directly see how it affects simulated results
3. AXIEM quickly and easily EM simulates significant portion of the MMIC and then directly optimizes it from the layout.
4. The accuracy of circuit and EM-based models.

Microwave Office 3D layout view of the active power splitter MMIC shows the pair of 10 FETs in a cascade configuration.

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Pocket Radar

Microwave Office Enables First Pass Design Success for World’s Only Pocket-Sized Sports Radar Gun.

Customer Background

Based in Santa Rosa, California, Pocket Radar™, Inc. designs, engineers and manufactures the world’s only pocket-sized personal speed radar gun that delivers accurate real-time speed measurements with the touch of a button. Utilizing a new breakthrough Doppler radar signal detection and processing system coupled with re-engineered microwave and antenna components that fit into a tiny planar structure the size of a credit card, Pocket Radar employs proprietary digital signal processing algorithms and state-of-the-art intelligent target acquisition techniques to provide users with industry-leading accuracy in speed measurement. Designed for use as a sports radar gun by coaches, players and motorsports fans, Pocket Radar provides full-sized performance in a palm-sized package

The Design Challenge

The Pocket Radar team set out to completely redesign the size and shape of traditional radar guns, opening a new market for a small, low-cost, accurate and convenient product. This required operation at 24 GHz using tiny, low-cost, off-the-shelf components and inexpensive substrates. The first instance of the product was designed through empirical methods and would have required multiple cut-and-try turns to optimize the robust performance of the oscillator and power amplifier and the matching between the two. With very tight budget and time-to-market pressures, rendering multiple board turns with the cut-and try approach was out of the question. Virtual prototyping and design optimization using AWR software was the correct alternative.

The Solution

The tight integration of layout, schematic and EM within AWR’s Microwave Office software environment provides fast design times and even faster test cycles, enabling the successful redesign of the Pocket Radar device. Additionally, the Microwave Office EM extraction capability made capturing the existing empirical design for further simulation at 24 GHz straightforward and easy, and its EM parameterization readily enabled design centering and optimization. Lastly, the software’s oscillator analysis tools provided precise means for understanding and optimization of the oscillator issues. Microwave Office allowed for quick modeling and redesign of the Pocket Radar 24 GH microwave system and first-pass success.

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CREE

Cree Speeds Development of High-Performance GaN Doherty Amplifiers by 70%.

Microwave Office Capabilities Provide First-Pass Design Success of Complex 2.1-GHz Circuits.

The Design Challenge

GaN has risen in a few short years from a promising RF power technology to a "must have" in amplifiers for defense applications, and is moving quickly into the wireless arena, currently the domain of silicon LDMOS devices. Cree has long concentrated on making GaN a viable alternative, and to achieve this must create new devices, faster, and at lower cost. The company uses AWR's Microwave Office design environment to bring many of these products to fruition, including all of its hybrid-based GaN power amplifiers. One of the most impressive of these is the CDPA21480 Doherty amplifier (the current power architecture of choice for base station transceivers) that delivers 480 W peak and 80 W average RF power for WCDMA applications in the 2110 to 2170 MHz UMTS band.

The Solution

Doherty amplifiers have unique characteristics that when coupled with digital predistortion linearization provide substantial increases in efficiency when driven by signals with high peak-to-average ratios. A Doherty amplifier is actually comprised of two separate amplifiers that function under different signal conditions. By using Microwave Office, Cree's designers were able to optimize the Doherty's performance over a range of power levels using individual source and load pull measurements for both these carrier and peaking amplifiers. The design task was further aided considerably by the software's simulation accuracy as well as the accuracy of its models, which when complemented by Cree's accurate large-signal models reduced design time by as much as 70%.

The amplifier design required the use of the full breadth of Microwave Office software's capabilities, from linear frequency-domain and harmonic balance simulation through electromagnetic (EM) analysis. Designers specifically noted the straightforward, seamless approach to the design flow, as well as simulation speed, linking of layout and schematic, and excellent support provided by AWR's support team.

"The speed and ease of use of Microwave Office together with the accurate passive component and transistor models allows us to realize first pass design success on the demonstration amplifiers we provide to our customers," said Simon Wood, RF product development manager at Cree. "In addition to reducing our time to market, we are also able to create more designs in a given time, which makes our development engineers more efficient."

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