Resource Library

Ongoing developments in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are expanding the capabilities and affordability of vehicles that can alert and assist drivers using radar technology mostly focused over the 76-to-81 GHz spectrum. This article examines some of the challenges behind developing millimeter-wave radar systems and the antenna-array technologies that will be responsible for the next generation of smart cars and trucks.

This article presents new features and functionalities in the latest version of AntSyn™, an automated antenna design, optimization, and synthesis tool that enables designers to automatically synthesize compact MIMO antenna arrays from user requirements.

David Vye, director of technical marketing at AWR Group, NI, discusses opportunities in the defense market, 5G, and the Internet of Things for RF microwave applications in 2018 and beyond.

Part 1 of this two-part series  discussed the development costs and complexity of new radar and communications systems utilizing phased-array antennas and how these challenges are being addressed through new functionalities in EDA software. Part 2 delves into individual antenna-element development and its incorporation into an array simulation that accounts for mutual coupling between radiating elements, as well as positioning (edge, center, corner) within the array and impairments due to element failure.

Ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is being adopted by a variety of applications such as inventory control tracking, race timing, attendee tracking, access control, and more. The impact of RF interference due to performance degradation of UHF RFID technology on the interference signal is emerging as a new obstacle. This paper investigates the interference analysis and experimental results of passive UHF RFID systems in sub-1GHz wireless communications systems. By considering interference signal frequency and power, interference deployment, antenna polarization, RF system-level analysis, and experimental verification are conducted to evaluate the impact of performance degradation in the UHF RFID system on the interference signal.

This article describes how load-pull data files with an independent swept parameter, such as power, can be used directly in the NI AWR Design Environment, specifically Microwave Office circuit design software. It also highlights the design of a Class J PA to show how load-pull data can complement traditional theoretical Class J analysis, thereby streamlining the design flow.

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.

It is evident that noise jamming is one of the several active jamming techniques employed against tracking radars and missile seekers. The noise jamming mainly aims at completely masking the desired radar signal by the externally injected noise signal. Of several parameters to be considered for the analysis of noise jamming problem, the noise jammer power is one of the most critical parameter. In this paper, emphasis is given for estimation and quantitative analyses of the effectiveness of break-lock in a missile borne phase locked loop (PLL) based monopulse radar receiver using external noise signal. The analyses involve estimating the jamming signal power required to break-lock as a function of radar echo signal power through computer simulation and experimental measurements.

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 describes the design process for a complete ultra-wideband (UWB) RF receiver, including both the RF circuit design and the printed circuit board (PCB) layout for manufacturing.

Phased array antenna systems, which use sets of two or more antennas, offer improved performance over single antennas and are well known for their usefulness in radar and aerospace applications.

NI AWR Design Environment/Microwave Office circuit design software was used to develop a circuit model for the design and analysis of this new UWB radar for the remote monitoring of breath activity.

As modern radar systems become more complex, they depend heavily on advanced signal processing algorithms to improve detection performance, making their design and implementation more challenging and expensive. The NI AWR integrated framework provides a unique avenue for the design, development, and testing of modern radar systems that takes advantage of the extensive RF design and measurement capabilities of NI AWR VSS and the flexibility of the NI PXI hardware.

This article  explains two methods for obtaining behavioral RF device models. The first performs simple AM-AM and AM-PM model extraction using instrumentation and is useful for narrowband applications. The second, more complex method, builds a time delay neural network (TDNN) for modeling the behavior of devices that use broadband modulated signals.

NI LabVIEW and AWR Microwave Office and VSS can be used together to augment RF/microwave circuit design with measurement results.

Even the "simplest" of RF devices, like RF power amplifiers (PAs), are now required to handle multiple wireless technologies and operate over a broader range of frequencies. To cope with the increasing complexity in designing wireless systems, designers are augmenting RF circuit simulations with real-world measurements to validate and test designs before moving forward with physical prototypes or component integration.

Circuit envelope simulation available in AWR circuit design software enables 3G and 4G wireless RF power amplifier designers achieve high performance products.

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.  

This paper uses Visual System Simulator software to investigate the bit error rates (BER) obtained using different filter types for RF front ends for WCDMA-UMTS mobile radio systems.