Software is open and scalable for 5G and mmWave, says Keysight Technologies
Equipment manufacturers and suppliers need to optimise performance, cost (yield), and time-to-market in designs for mainstream 5G deployments. However, higher frequencies coupled with the increasing design integration and complexity of 5G, require a unified, end-to-end approach to eliminate late stage design iterations and ensure first pass success, says Keysight Technologies. The company has introduced PathWave Design 2021, describing it as an open, scalable and predictable 5G and mmWave software solution. It enables design and validation engineers to accelerate delivery of chip, board and system products by integrating device, circuit and system design with improved performance and accuracy, says the company.
“Current design methodologies for 4G and earlier standards use approximate figures of merit to get designs to market quickly,” said Tom Lillig, general manager of PathWave Software Solutions at Keysight Technologies. “This legacy approach is insufficient for modern designs, which increase integration requirements due to 5G broadband modulation schemes. The design techniques developed with previous generations of designs simply aren’t sufficient to meet the 5G standards,” he added.
PathWave 5G addresses high frequency and complexity with new capabilities across all design phases from simulation to validation, as well as test and manufacturing. Engineers can eliminate months from product schedules by implementing best practices in RF/microwave workflows, says Keysight.
The software offers advantages such as increasing the speed and reducing the complexity of chip level analysis and verification with integrated electromagnetic simulation. It can also predict performance at the circuit and system levels using common modulated signals and accurate RF system models.
Users can also scale the end-to-end ecosystem from device to circuit to test and manufacturing with model-driven engineering and accelerate the verification process by running simulations in parallel in the high-performance cloud computing.
Keysight’s PathWave Design 2021 software suite enables power amplifier designers using RF gallium nitride (GaN) to model trapping and thermal effects. Front-end module and RF transceiver designers can assemble technologies to model packaging and coupling effects quickly and efficiently, while system integrators can predict system performance with RF circuits, antennae and modulated signals.
It can be used by system architects to accurately perform RF modeling with a combined platform for digital, RF and antenna system simulation and by component manufacturers to validate the performance of their designs in target system architectures. It can also be used to support phased array designers and conduct fast, accurate beamforming simulations with realistic RF impairment modelling.
The PathWave Design software suite includes: PathWave Advanced Design System (ADS), PathWave RFIC Design (GoldenGate), PathWave System Design (SystemVue), PathWave EM Design (EMPro) and PathWave Device Modeling (IC-CAP).
