Resource Library

With the advent of connected smart devices, researchers and engineers  are exploring design tools and manufacturing processes that will help them develop smaller, more efficient integrated antennas for a wide range of applications. This article explores such an effort by the students of NC State University working with commercial antenna synthesis software and 3D printing.

The NI AWR Design Environment platform featured new capabilities in V14 of Microwave Office software that focus on expediting all stages of design from initial starts using powerful network synthesis to circuit/system and EM simulation technology for performance analysis, optimization, and verification.

Designing a millimeter-wave PA presents challenges from the extreme miniaturization of millimeter-wave circuits and the need to conserve signal power as much as possible by minimizing forward and reflected signal losses. This white paper examines the design challenges for practical millimeter-wave power amplifiers delivering the necessary power, linearity and efficiency for future 5G networks.

While preparing for IMS018 and our pending V14 release of NI AWR Design Environment software, I was reminded that this year marks the 20th anniversary of Microwave Office circuit design software hitting the show floor at what was then more commonly referred to as MTT.  This blog is the first in a series we plan to roll out this year to commemorate our history and innovation success.

In this article, a design flow is described that uses NI AWR Design Environment platform, specifically Microwave Office circuit design software, as well as a measurement technique for determining the input and output impedances of the matching networks, prior to RFPA turn on. Using this approach, excellent agreement between modeled and measured performance is achieved with a first-pass design.

The growing demand for wireless connectivity requires antenna solutions that are optimized for system performance, cost, and size. In addition, with the expected demand for design experience greatly exceeding the current supply of antenna engineers, an antenna synthesis approach that can create automated antenna designs in less time is very beneficial. This application example demonstrates how to use AntSyn antenna synthesis software to design and build a customized high-definition TV (HDTV) antenna by generating a set of antenna specifications such as frequencies, bandwidth, and gain, for planar antennas.

Sherry Hess, IMS 2018 WIM Co-Chair, discusses plans for the IMS 2018 Women in Microwaves event, titled “Women in Engineering: Academia, Defense, Industry, and Now Into BioTech.”

In this article, the design of a miniature hairpin resonator filter is presented to demonstrate how port tuning can accelerate the design of planar filters. In the example presented, the Nuhertz FilterSolutions software is used to design a microstrip miniature hairpin resonator filter, which is then exported to the AXIEM 3D planar EM simulator within the NI AWR Design Environment, where it is optimized to obtain the desired performance.

This paper presents an alternative approach for designing push-pull RFPAs using NI AWR software, in which the asymmetric totem-pole amplifier consisting of two N-channel field-effect transistors (FETs) stacked one on top of each other, takes the output from their common node.

Designing distributed filters that incorporate resonators with defected microstrip structures (DMSs) can help combat spurious passbands. A new feature in Nuhertz Technologies FilterSolutions program supports the design of filters utilizing DMSs. This article explains how to efficiently design such filters using Microwave Office circuit design software and the new FilterSolutions modeling capability in order to achieve accurate synthesis of stripline, microstrip, or suspended substrate filter designs when using these resonators.