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Determining the Best RF Simulation Tools as an RF Consulting Engineer

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Determining the Best RF Simulation Tools as an RF Consulting Engineer

by How-Siang Yap, Keysight Technologies, Inc.

There have been many consolidations in the RF industry over the last several years which have resulted in major phone, semiconductor component and defense contractors merging. That has impacted RF and microwave engineers. For those impacted, the natural first question is: What is next? For some, the answer is intriguing and clear—become an independent consultant. It’s a growing trend and many RF and microwave engineers are delivering their highly sought after RF expertise back to the industry and often to the same companies they used to work for.

Now more than ever, these engineering consultants must be very careful when it comes to choosing which RF design tools to invest in when delivering their consulting projects. In general, the three main criteria they adopt when selecting a tool are value, capability and credibility.

Value

As an employee of a large corporation, an RF engineer typically has easy access to licenses for a range of full-featured RF and microwave simulation tools. This is not always the case when those same engineers branch out on their own. Many find it financially prohibitive to replicate such tools themselves. Fortunately, there are full-featured RF tools that offer great value for the price and can be used to successfully kick start a consulting business.

One example is the Genesys RF/microwave synthesis and simulation tool, which provides more than sufficient capability for designers of RF/ microwave system and circuit boards to take on consulting projects (Figure 1). Priced at less than $5000 and offering features such as schematic capture, layout, linear and noise simulation, optimization, statistical yield analysis, Matlab scripting, and test instrument links, it offers the value that engineering consultants require to succeed in their design projects on a limited budget. For just a small investment, they get access to a range of powerful capabilities, while still retaining the ability to upgrade when additional functionality is required.

Capabilities

Before investing scarce personal money on an RF design tool to make a living as an independent consultant, a safe choice is to learn what tools other successful consultants are using and why they were selected. In addition to identifying a great value for the price, they should look for capabilities that are force multipliers to enable a single individual to compete with engineering teams to win bids. After winning a bid, they also need to ensure that they produce flawless designs so they can successfully collect payment upon delivery. Some of the specific capabilities to look for in making that vision a reality are automatic circuit synthesis, system root cause analysis and integrated Electromagnetic (EM) simulation—all of which are key to enabling high engineering productivity.

Circuit Synthesis

Circuit synthesis is the most powerful force multiplier in a design tool because it allows circuit topologies, and component and physical geometries, to be automatically generated within seconds from the specifications the engineer provides (Figure 2). No matter how skilled you are, the routine design of RF matching networks and filters is always a time consuming process. When one expert designer was asked how long he needs to design a broadband matching network between an amplifier and a complex frequency dependent antenna load using a simulation tool with optimization, his estimate was at least half a day (4 hours). Using automatic circuit synthesis, he could fully complete the task in less than 15 minutes—a 16x improvement in engineering productivity.

Circuit synthesis automates the process by incorporating the design equations for different categories of lumped or distributed topologies with optimization automatically set up to let you design a filter or matching network literally in minutes (Figure 2). Automatic circuit synthesis is not limited to matching networks and filters, but covers 11 different categories of circuits, including mixers, oscillators, equalizers, signal control, PLLs, and physical transmission lines. Collectively, they bring expert theoretical and practical knowledge under the user’s command to be instantly deployed through a few clicks of the mouse.

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