Genesys 2018 Release Notes

Release Highlights: Vendor Parts Synthesis

Vendor Parts Synthesis (VPS) is a tool used to take any linear analysis design with Capacitors, Inductors, and Resistors (CLR) and find purchasable vendors parts that give the best performance of the design. This includes carrying an ideal electrical design to physical layout that includes EM simulation and a bill of materials for parts that can be readily purchased in the marketplace. 

• Supports any design with CLR parts that has a linear analysis
• Default simulation and graph limits are copied from the reference design
• Component values can come from the preferred number series called E-Series
• Full support of Modelithics CLR libraries that includes parasitics and substrate dependencies
• Dynamic footprint support for E-Series components
• CLR defaults that include tolerance and body style
• Detailed control of each CLR part in the design that uses the original CLR part, the defaults CLR properties, or can be individually customized
• Automatic generation of the layout including microstrip connectivity whose widths and lengths can be controlled
• Ability to disable automatic generation of the layout so user can edit and modify a layout before EM analysis and optimization
• Automatic generation and configuration of a Momentum EM simulation along with a linear cosimulation design to speed performance of optimization, Monte Carlo, and Yield
• Graph that shows a performance comparison of closest value design, EM cosimulation design, to the reference design
• Optimization Filter Goal wizards to aid in the creation of goals that follow traditional filter characteristics like LPF, HPF, BPF, BSF
• Supports sloped goals
• Two step optimization where continuous optimization is used to get the best error before closest values and grid optimization is performed on values that can be purchased
• Ability to control the number of discrete values up and down from nominal used during grid optimization
• Ability to control the number of steps of no error improvement before switching from continuous optimization to grid optimization
• Optimization can use EM cosimulation design
• Automatic creation of Monte Carlo and Yield analysis along with corresponding graphs
• Automatic setting of variable distribution and limits in the Monte Carlo and Yield analysis for all variables based on user settings of part tolerances
• Ability to copy optimization goal for use in the Yield analysis as a starting point
• Yields traces are marked in green when they pass otherwise red when they fail
• Yields results shown in Yield graph title
• Automatic creation of bill of materials

Release Highlights: Modulated RF

• Added the following Modulation formats: 2048-QAM, 4096-QAM, 16-APSK, 32-APSK, DQPSK, Pi/4-DQPSK, Offset QPSK, SOQPSK-MIL, SOQPSK-MIL, SOQPSK-TG, D8PSK, Edge-8PSK, Pi/8-D8PSK, MSK, GMSK, M-ary CP, Muti-h CPM, CQPSK, Pi/4-CQPSK, IJF-OQPSK, FQPSK, EFQPSK, 2FSK, 4FSK, 16FSK, DBPSK, Pi/2-DBPSK

• Spectrum plots and ACPR are fully supported by all of these modulations.
• Of these added modulations only 2048-QAM, 4096-QAM, 16-APSK, 32-APSK support constellations.
• Of these added modulation only 2048-QAM and 4096-QAM support EVM measurements.

Release Highlights: Dynamic Footprints

• A new footprint has been created called @*2PadDynamic that is a dynamic 2 pad footprint that uses can set the pad width, pad height, pad gap, and pad offset in mm or mils. See Using Dynamic Footprints for more information.

Release Highlights: Filter Goal Wizard

• A filter goal wizard has been provided on the Goals tab of the optimization to aid to definition of goals that follow filter characteristics. From user provided transitions points and the type of filter response the goals will automatically be extracted from the active dataset and placed in the goal table. See Creating an Optimization for more information.

Release Highlights: Sloped Goals

• Target values on the Goals tab of an Optimization or Yield can now contain a vector of two values to support sloped goals. The two target values are associated with the min and max frequency values. See Creating an Optimization for more information.

Release Highlights: Grid Optimization

• Grid optimization is a constrained search of discrete values from E-series or the Modelithics RLC parts library to find the optimal set of discrete RLC component values starting from a previously optimized set of real-values produced by continuous gradient or pattern optimization. Grid optimization can be constrained to search N steps up or down for the nearest available discrete value components from the original real values. See Grid Optimization for more information.

Release Highlights: Yield Improvements

• Yield analysis now reports the yield percentage automatically on the yield analysis plot. Pass/fail trails during a yield analysis are indicated by green/red traces.

Release Highlights: Modelithics Select Library

• Genesys 2018 ships a free Modelithics SELECT library containing active and passive components with accurate parasitic models that are substrate and pad size dependent. It is used by the new Vendor Parts Synthesis capability for automatically selecting available discrete vendor RLC components to synthesize a producible RF board design. 

Release Highlights: Coilcraft library based on SPICE data rather than S parameters which uses the dynamic footprint

• The Coilcraft inductor library now contains dynamic footprints with SPICE equivalent circuit models for better accuracy.

Release Highlights: Font Settings

• Added new Tools > Options > Font settings for Graphs, Schematics, Tables, and Datasets. Useful for setting and saving font size presents to display correctly for hi-res 4K monitors. See Fonts Options Tab for more information.
• Default font sizes for Graphs have been increased.
• Added font size increase/decrease commands to the Graph right-button menu, which will adjusts the size of graph text.
• Added font size increase/decrease keyboard accelerators to graphs: 
  • Ctrl+ +  (Ctrl+Plus key) 
  • Ctrl+ –  (Ctrl+Minus key).

Release Highlights: Toolbars

• The menu toolbars are now constrained by default to a single row to prevent annoying vertical active window shifts.

Release Highlights: Platform 

Search Tools 

• New Workspace Search tool allows users to search for objects, parts, parameters, variables, and text in workspaces.
• New Example Explorer is provided under Help menu to explore examples and search for a keyword among examples. You can right-click on any part on a schematic or in the Part Selector and select Find Examples... to open the Example Explorer with the model(s) of the part pre-populated in the search field.

• Part Selector now supports searching models across all libraries. Just select <All> in Current Library and use Filter By to search a keyword.

• The search (Filter By:) in Part Selector supports searching models associated with a part. 

MATLAB Script 

• A new  getinterpdata function can be used to extract the data of interest that can be used elsewhere in the product. This is powerful multidimensional interpolator that can extract data from a multidimensional dataset. For more information, please refer to getinterpdata.  

• getindepvalue function has been updated to support multiple independent variables. For more information, please refer to getindepvalue .
• postinfo function is provided to display a message as information in the Error window. 

Usability

• The minimum autoscale level for logarithmic units (dB, dBV, dBm, etc.) for the y-axes (Y-Axis and Right Y-Axis) was changed from -400 to -200. As a result, if you have a spectrum plot with content below -200 dBm (e.g. -300 dBm), autoscaling the graph will set the Y-axis lower limit to -200 and any content below it will not be visible in the graph. You can manually set the Y-Axis range by double-clicking on the graph, selecting the Y-Axis tab, clearing the Auto-Scale checkbox, and entering the desired values in the Min and Max fields. This is a global setting that can be changed by going to Tools > Options > Graph tab and updating the Autoscale Minimum for dB units value. This setting takes effect immediately (no need to exit SystemVue and restart).
• Multiselect on the workspace tree is now supported for cut, copy and delete operations to facilitate workspace organization.
• Toolbars no longer cause the workspace views to "jump".  Most toolbars now appear on the top row.  The others are now "floating".
• Defaults sizes in the Tune window and tune fields in the synthesis modules have been adjusted to make values easier to tune and read.
• Equations and the Command Prompt now default to using MATLAB Script, instead of Engineering Language. Previously build workspaces will continue to use Engineering Language for existing equation blocks, but newly added equations will use MATLAB Script.  Also, inline expressions, as used in graph properties, table properties, optimization properties, etc. still use Engineering Language.

General Improvements 

• "Auto Calculate" option is added to the right-click menu of the workspace tree Equation object.
• Support "Open Containing Folder" when you right-click the workspace in the workspace tree.
  
• Several stability issues have been resolved in the optimizer. i.e. running out of memory and random crashes have been addressed.
• Memory leaks in Momentum and other simulators has been addressed.
• All simulators (circuit, system, EM) are multi-core and multi-threaded. Based on Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL), only Intel processors on PC set to full performance power profile will take advantage of this feature.
• Updated Momentum, EECad, and Testlink to their latest versions.

Monte Carlo, Optimization, and Yield

• Tune individual elements is an option for a vector of element values.

getinterpdata() function

• Now supports Excel, CVS, MDIF, S2D, P2D, GMDIF Excel files.The path may be relative. In this case, MDIF, S2D, P2D, GMDIF will try to resolve it to the workspace folder (Excel files have more ways to resolve relative path, including search in zipped archives and expanding them to APPDATA folder).  

Spectrasys Improvements

General

• Added support for LO spur self mixing where LO spurs will mix with the main LO and appear at the non LO ports of a mixer. See LO Spur LO Mixing for additional information.
• Updated the S-Parameter File and Dataset models (NPOx and NPODx) to support a noise mode. The noise mode can select noise from the S-Parameter data or it can be a user-specified value which will override any noise parameters that may exist in an active S-Parameter file. The SDATA_NL, SDATA_NL_HO, and SDATA_NLI models are updated to use the new feature in the S-Parameter File and Dataset models. NOTE: When loading old workspaces the NoiseMode parameter will default to From S-Param Data. If the noise figure parameter NF was set in a prior workspace and used rather than noise figure parameters contained in the S-parameter file then the NoiseMode parameter must be changed to User Entered to give consistent simulation results with prior releases where the NoiseMode parameter did not exist.
• Intermod vectors traditionally have been semicolon separated. However, this is a column vector which is not what is needed for the RF amplifier IMN vector for frequency dependent simulation. Because of some defects using old IMN column vectors, it was determined that IMN is best to use row vectors. Examples were updated to support this new style (in particular the 10th order spectrasys amplifier example). However, users that use the old column vector format will now get a format error message.
• The 'Maximum Number of Spectrums to Generate' was obsoleted. This parameter was located on the 'Options' tab of the System Analysis. Old workspaces that used specific values will still be supported. Setting this parameter incorrectly would always cause convergence errors.
• A new parameter called 'Max Number of Passes' was added to the options tab. This parameter controls the maximum number of passes used for convergence. For additional information see Options Tab.

Behavioral Filter Improvements

• Behavioral filter insertion loss has always been implemented using Q. Even though this is physically what happens in real filters this causes problem at the behavioral level as the bandwidth also shrinks. Bandwidth predistortion was not accounted for. The actual filter shape given the specifications was significantly different at higher insertion loss levels. Now insertion loss will use Q for insertion losses below 3.5 dB. For insertion losses about this value the specified response will be scaled preserving the bandwidth specifications. This approach aligns more closely with the ADS implementation. For additional information on insertion loss, Q, and bandwidth predistortion see chapter 6, 'Finite-Q Elements and Predistortion' in the reference below.

  H. J. Blinchikoff and A. I. Zverev, Filtering in the Time and Frequency Domains, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1976.

Sys-Parameter Improvements

• Interpolation between Sys-Parameter data points is now linear in its native unit rather than linear in MKS. This means that in prior release parameters that have native units for dB, for example, would be converted to linear, like linear gain, then interpolated. Parameters with dB units, like gain and NF, interpolation will now be linear in dB. For example, if we have two data points of 10 dB and 20 dB the middle data point will now be 15 dB rather than the middle of 10 to 100, which is 55 in linear units or 17.4 dB. See Sys-Parameters and Frequency Dependency for additional information.

New Path Measurement

Path measurements now contain the complex input and output impedances:

• ZIN
• ZOUT

Spectrasys Resolved Issues

• Fixed stability issue associated with noise simulation when using the Modulated RF or RF link features.
• Fixed a frequency comb issue where high carrier count intermod envelops were not created for amplifiers when located after a mixer. This could be seen as incorrect ACPR for stages following a mixer.
• Fixed crashes associated with noise simulation when using the modulated RF feature.
• Fixed a frequency comb issue when more than one Multisource was used to generate a frequency comb. Intermod frequencies for the 2nd Multisource would incorrectly use the frequencies from the 1st Multisource.
• Fixed incorrect constellation and EVM with Modulated RF when using LTE or WLAN modulation through a mixer with high side LO.
• Fixed an issue in Spectrasys where channel noise power and cascaded noise figure would depend on the number of data levels being display.
• Updated 'AM to PM Basics' shipping example to include differential phase calculations and graphs.
• Fixed an issue with Sys-Parameter import where some variable were imported incorrectly because of a partial name match.
  

Spectrasys New Examples

• Spectrasys: Amplifier Power Sweep w Harmonics.wsg which illustrates a power sweep showing the fundamental along with 2nd and 3rd harmonics on the same graphs

General Defects addressed 

• Passive Filter, MFilter, and SFilter remove autoscale as a default for Y axis values and forced option when using these synthesis tools. Now good default values are selected at startup and when different typologies are selected you are not deceived by the performance or lack of performance due to the changing of the axis ranges. When ranges are fixed it is much easier to compare one typology to the next. If the user wants to change the graph values or set to autoscale the information persists and those user changes are not removed when changing topologies or design parameters.
• Removed the obsolete 'Empower' option from the MFilter layout combo-box.
• Updated Passive Filter graph Y Axis values to be 0 to -80 dB for S21 and 0 to -40 dB for S11
• Fixed a defect with MFilter goals that were sometimes not set correctly when changing filter shape.
• Added a 4th optimization goal to MFilter for BPF and BSF to maintain passband transmission and stopband reflection respectively.
• Graph Properties dialog box is now re-sizable.
• Layout Properties dialog box is now re-sizable. 
• S-Parameter models have been updated to support a vector of noise figures that can have frequencies independent of the S parameter data frequencies.
• Improved Genesys Momentum performance by expanding cases of using cached Momentum data from last run, when calculation is not needed.
• Fixed Momentum mesh displaying issue.
• Deleted Verilog-A compiler (with saving support of old compiled Verilog-A models).
• Fixed Tools / Options / Layout - Factory Defaults, which was ignoring some settings.
• Updated X Parameter model to support multiple variable.
• Resolved installer issue to properly install .NET 4.6 when an earlier version of .NET 4 exists.
• Fixed issues with setdisplayunit function; it will now work for power spectral density units dBm/Hz, dBm/MHz, dBW/Hz, and dBW/MHz.
• Resolved customer request for DIODE model - support grading coefficient  M more or equal 1.
• The issue in using MATLAB R2015b and R2016a from MATLAB Script can be resolved by applying the MATLAB patch http://www.mathworks.com/support/bugreports/1310916. MATLAB Script works with MATLAB R2014a, R2014b, R2015a, R2016b and after without the MATLAB patch.

Obsolete Features

General 

• GraphFigure function was removed; use graph_figure instead. 

Empower 

• Empower is in the process of being deprecated beginning with its removal from the “Add Analysis” menu to avoid confusion in choosing the best electromagnetic (EM) simulator for EM analysis. For new designs, use Momentum because it is orders of magnitude faster and uses much less memory. Empower is retained for opening up old Empower analysis but not for creating new EM analysis. The user can cut-&-paste an existing Empower analysis as a workaround to create a new one.  

Spectrasys 

• The parameter called 'Maximum Number of Spectrums to Generate' was obsoleted on the options tab of the System Analysis. It was replaced by a parameter called 'Maximum Number of Passes Used for Convergence'. 

Verilog-A Compiler  

• The Verilog-A compiler option was removed. Compiled Verilog-A models are still supported just the compiler option was removed. A workaround is to use the Verilog-A compiler in Genesys 2015.08 then use those compiled models in Genesys 2018.

Known Issues 

• Genesys 2018 is not recognized by ADS 2016.01 or earlier versions of ADS when Using the ADS Link. You need to install ADS 2017 or later versions in order to use the ADS link.
• If you encounter an error indicating "MATLAB Script engine failed to run" during Genesys start up, make sure the installed version of Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable (x64) is 8.0.61000 or higher. You can download and install the latest Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable (x64) from Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package (x64).
• Some issues with plot legends not always being created properly have been observed with MATLAB R2017b under some rare conditions so MATLAB R2018a is recommended when using MATLAB Script in Retail MATLAB mode.
• MATLAB R2018a is unsupported in Genesys if the current Windows user name contains non-ASCII characters. Use an earlier version of MATLAB, or an ASCII-only user name. Contact support for other possible workarounds.

• Issue: 3D visualization does not work properly when McAfee antivirus is installed.

  Workaround: You need to disable the McAfee antivirus to make the 3D visualization work.

• Some dialogs may not render properly on Windows 7 machines using 150% scaling.
    
  

Licensing and Installation

Licensing

•  Genesys does not automatically release licenses after checking out. From Genesys 2014.03 onwards, Action > Release All Simulation Licenses option is available to manually release all checked out simulation licenses.

Known Issues

Fixed Issues