Resource Library

Microwave Journal asked some of the leading electromagnetic compatibility (EMC)/electromagnetic interference (EMI) electronic design automation (EDA) software suppliers to provide a description of their features for EMC/EMI applications and unique solving capabilities for these markets.

Recent trends in active electronically scanned arrays (AESA) are targeting new radar payloads for satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). These radar payloads are driving size and performance requirements, which are being addressed through novel architectures and system capabilities made possible through improvements in microwave and signal processing technologies. Behind these development efforts are a host of evolving EDA technologies that support designers with system architecture, component specifications, physical design of individual components and verification prior to prototyping. This article will discuss these technology trends and present several examples where advances in EDA tools, including NI AWR Design Environment, are supporting next-generation AESA and phased-array radar development.

This article describes a new approach for RF engineers designing systems where analog and digital RF waveforms coexist. The new characterization approach and subsequent extraction of a mathematical model equivalent to scattering parameters for mixed-signal devices uses NI instrumentation and NI AWR Design Environment and can be used in system-level simulators to design 5G and other communication systems.

Recent trends in active electronically scanned arrays (AESA) are targeting new radar payloads for satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). These radar payloads are driving size and performance requirements, which are being addressed through novel architectures and system capabilities made possible through improvements in microwave and signal processing technologies. Behind these development efforts are a host of evolving EDA technologies that support designers with system architecture, component specifications, physical design of individual components and verification prior to prototyping. This article will discuss these technology trends and present several examples where advances in EDA tools, including NI AWR Design Environment, are supporting next-generation AESA and phased-array radar development.

Information connectivity continues to evolve, as does wireless technology. This next era, the so called Internet of Things (IoT) or even the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), will drive the development of new wireless technologies supporting the underlying infrastructure defined in 5G network standards currently being conceptualized. The promise of increased information bandwidth and faster response times (low latency) for real-time wireless control, all with minimal power consumption, makes for highly attractive yet very challenging system performance goals. While the technical requirements necessary to make 5G and the IoT a commercial success are very demanding, the economic potential and business opportunities are enormous.

This article discusses how achieving target levels of RF/microwave system-level performance requires proper operation of many components and subsystems.

To overcome the challenges of complex radar design, digital and RF/microwave engineers are increasingly cooperating to achieve overall system performance metrics that are jointly optimized across the two disparate domains. This article discusses how this can be done using the NI AWR Design Environment™ combined with LabVIEW and NI PXI instruments to design, validate, and prototype a radar system. The NI AWR integrated framework provides a unique avenue for digital, RF and system engineers, to all collaborate on a complex radar system.

This article examines the new features in the V12 release of NI AWR Design Environment.

Radar technology now serves a broad range of applications well beyond military systems, including commercial, civil, and scientific uses. Radar is also being used in weather and law-enforcement applications, as well as in automotive and public transportation system, for global mapping, oil exploration, and even for quality control in manufacturing applications.

This article describes how NI AWR Design Environment™ can be combined with LabVIEW and test instruments to design, prototype, and validate components or systems that comply with the WLAN 802.11ac standard.

RF planning, the process of assigning the frequencies, transmitter locations and parameters of a wireless communications system, is an important element of system design as it ensures sufficient coverage and capacity for the services required by the end product. Traditionally, system designers have relied on the use of spreadsheets for RF planning purposes rather than digging deeper into the problem(s) at hand: establishing the best frequency plan and system architecture to meet the system specification.

This article discusses some of the fundamental research and development challenges in both the digital and RF/millimeter wave domains (such as waveform generation, receiver algorithms and transmit/receive front ends). It addresses current and future directions in design, system integration and test, featuring an example of an integrated tool chain by Visual System Simulator and National Instruments.

This article  discusses an automated approach to predicting performance of an RF system using a combination of NI’s T&M instrumentation and LabVIEW software with VSS system design software to build customized models.

AWR’s Visual System Simulator (VSS) software for system simulation of RF end-to-end architecture design can be used to address the challenges of SDR design.

This white paper illustrates, Visual System Simulator™ (VSS) and National instruments’ LabVieW graphical programming environment are now co-simulating so as to better enable designers to analyze, optimize, and verify complex RF circuits, subsystems and digital signal processing within a unified framework.

This application note describes how to interface R&S ZVA/ZVB/ZVT vector network analyzer with AWR electronic design automation (EDA) software. Using AWR
Testwave™ option, measured data can be exported via GPIB/LAN and verified with simulated data. Basic filter design is simplified with AWR NuHertz™ filter wizard, an optimization tool that can be introduced to correlate measured with simulated data.  

The design of today's WiMax products requires a unified baseband and RF design methodology to help designers overcome the challenges of working with WiMax signals and take advantage of the market's windows of opportunity.

Such a design methodology uses realistic modulated signals and provides accurate performance predictions for RF components, eliminating overdesign. This expanded methodology enables the use of system-level measurements that are defined in the WiMax specifications and which are common to all other wireless standards.

Module designs, and specifically handset power amplifier (PA) and front-end module (FEM) designs, are at a crossroads. Traditionally, the module has been an integration platform for discrete functional blocks enabled by considerable design margin, reasonable size and power constraints, and the luxury of predicted performance from cascaded analysis.

The Visual System Simulator™ (VSS) design suite from Applied Wave Research (AWR®) provides a WiMAX broadband fixed-wireless solution for the design of WiMAX-certified BWA products. This solution meets the IEEE standard 802.16 Wireless MAN-OFDM PHY specifications and provides all the bit-level functionality, including framing, randomization, coding, interleaving, modulation, and pilot, channelization, as well as bandwidth options for uplink and downlink operations.

The  diversity and complexity of  wireless  communication systems have  made the traditional separate specification of radio frequency (RF) circuit blocks an inadequate design methodology. Effective design of RF circuit blocks requires an awareness and understanding of their complex interactions in the context of the entire system at all levels of abstraction. Within this context, designers must also be able to respond quickly to the rapid changes of mobile communication applications. The unrelenting demands of this business to supply new and ever more sophisticated hardware to the marketplace with increasingly shorter market windows mandates a truly unified and interactive RF system and circuit design solution.