Agilent RF Design Environment (RFDE) is a software design platform for large-scale RF/mixed-signal IC designs in the Cadence environment. It integrates Agilent’s leading RF simulation technologies into the Cadence industry-standard analog/mixed signal design flow framework.

All embedded in Cadence Affirma Analog Design Environment, RFDE consists of five combined parts:

• ADSsim, which includes the following analysis and simulation tools from Agilent’s ADS: DC, AC/S-parameter, harmonic balance, circuit envelope, transient / convolution, parameter sweep, parameter optimization, and Monte Carlo yield analysis.
• Data Display, which includes Measurements expressions, probe circuit, auto display, and snapshot mode.
• adsLib, which includes RF sources, Circuit components, System components, Microstrip and Multilayer components.
• Wireless Test Benches offering system-level wireless signal sources and standards measurements.
• Momentum, a fully integrated planar electromagnetic simulator for passive circuit analysis.

RF Design Environment makes available important frequency-domain and mixed-domain simulation technologies; optimization and statistical design tools; additional device, system, and behavioral models; and powerful data display and post-processing.

All of these features provide valuable benefits to the large-scale RF and mixed signal IC designers. These benefits are provided within the Cadence design flow and Cadence simulation user interface – and side by side with established Cadence tools such as Spectre and Spectre RF.

RFDE is embedded in the Cadence Affirma Analog Design Environment and is accessible to designers the same way as Cadence Composer schematic editor, Assura/Diva layout verification, and Spectre/SpectreRF. Simulations are set up using Affirma, in the same way that simulations are set up for Spectre RF and other simulators. Simulation states can be saved and other features in the Cadence design environment are also available.

RF Design Environment: Simulation Technologies

The simulator technologies in RF Design Environment use a mature and robust frequency domain simulator and mixed-domain solutions that take advantage of the strengths of both time-domain and frequency-domain simulation.

Harmonic Balance Simulator provides frequency-domain, steady-state, large signal analysis of non-linear circuits excited with multi-tone sources. Harmonic Balance (HB) is used to simulate noise, gain compression, harmonic distortion, oscillator spurs, phase noise, and intermodulation products in non-linear circuits much faster than SPICE-based simulators.

Harmonic Balance is best applied to circuits with two or more large signal tones (multiple tones, frequency translation, mixers, detectors, and multipliers) with frequencies that do not need to be co-periodic. It can handle frequency domain models including transmission lines, microstrip lines and N-ports. It is very useful on oscillator and VCO design and analysis.

Amplifier compression, harmonic distortion, oscillator spurious, phase noise, and mixer inter-modulation products are other types of analysis that HB performs extremely well.

Circuit Envelope simulation uses an advanced time-swept harmonic balance simulation technique. It enables analysis of time-varying carriers such as PLL, AGC, VCO, VCA, modulators, and the like.source

RFSim99 is a free linear S-parameter based circuit simulator offering schematic capture, simulation, 1 port and 2 port S-parameter display and file support, tolerance analysis, stability circles, and much more.It can cost large sums of money to get a workstation seat at some of the high end simulation and analysis software suites. But the underlying mathematics that these programs use is not secret, it is in the public domain and there are low cost or shareware packages that will do the same computations. Often they lack the features and the extensive user interfaces, but the internal engines are running the same equations.

For low frequency or time domain simulations there are versions of SPICE freely available. For RF simulations the field is smaller, but one free program that repeatedly crops up in the listings is RFSim99.

RFSim99 works with S-parameters. This means that not only will it simulate and analyse circuits built out of its internal library of components, but that it can accommodate any circuit block or stage for which these are known. S-parameters are easily measured with a network analyser, so RFSim99 avoids the problems of many packages by not being bound to third party models. As well as the features one would expect to see, such as schematic drawing and graphical analysis, there are a few really good extras, such as an integrated filter design tool and the ability to run tolerance sweeps.

RFSim99 was written by Stewart Hyde. The embedded link to his web site is no longer valid, but at pRF we were so impressed by the program that we tracked him down.
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SysCalc is a Microsoft Windows-based program for modeling the noise, gain, intermodulation/spurious performance, and compression point of a system of cascaded components where each component is characterized by known parameters. SysCalc’s powerful features allow you to intelligently balance such parameters as dynamic range, sensitivity, spurious levels and gain distribution. And, with its presentation-quality output you can impressively document your designs. SysCalc uses a tabbed-notebook metaphor to organize components into logically independent System pages. The pages are then linked together to form the complete system. Each System page can be uniquely customized to display only the information and data fields that are important to you. There is no limit to the number of components that can be placed on a page or the number of pages that can be linked in a project. You can also attach one or more of SysCalc’s unique Reports to each system. These Reports allow SysCalc to display tailored results, such as yield analysis or graphical performance, as a function of input power, frequency or system temperature.
Key Benefits

• Organize your system block diagram into separate subsystems or linked pages using SysCalc’s unique NoteBook metaphor.  Subsystem data automatically scrolls into parent page.
• Do “what if” scenarios instantly using powerful spreadsheet-like capabilities
• Discover system deficiencies quickly with SysCalc’s automatic calculation of noise figure and intermodulation contributions on a block-by-block basis.
• Incorporate BER (bit-error rate) information into the system model for a variety of modulation schemes (FM, BPSK/QPSK, DPSK, FSK, OOK, ASK, PCM, PI/4 DQPSK, PAM, QAM).
• Quickly analyze interior points of the cascade by moving the system generator and probe icons.
• Cut, copy and paste components/pages between projects
• Save working notes with each file, system page or component. Automatic preview of the notes in FileOpen Dialog Box.

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TINA Design Suite is a powerful yet affordable software package for analyzing, designing and real time testing analog, digital, VHDL, MCU, and mixed electronic circuits and their PCB layouts. You can also analyze RF, communication, optoelectronic circuits, test & debug microcontroller applications. A unique feature of TINA that you can bring your circuit to life with the optional USB controlled TINALab II hardware which turns your computer into a powerful, multifunction T&M instrument. Electrical engineers will find TINA an easy to use, high performance tool, while educators will welcome its unique features for the training environment.
Easy to use schematic entry. Enter any circuit within minutes with TINA’s easy-to-use schematic editor. Enhance your schematics by adding text and graphics elements such lines, arcs arrows, frames around the schematics and title blocks. Choose components from the large library containing more than 20,000 manufacturer models. You can check schematics for errors with TINA’s advanced ERC functions. The schematic editor supports complex hierarchical designs, team design and version control.
Powerful analysis tools. Analyze your circuit through more than 20 different analysis modes or with 10 high tech virtual instruments. Present your results in TINA’s sophisticated diagram windows, on virtual instruments, or in the live interactive mode where you can even edit your circuit during operation, develop, run, debug and test VHDL & MCU applications.
Integrated PCB design. The new fully integrated layout module of TINA has all the features you need for advanced PCB design, including multilayer PCB’s with split power plane layers, powerful autoplacement & autorouting, rip-up and reroute, manual and ”follow-me” trace placement, DRC, forward and back annotation, pin and gate swapping, keep-in and keep-out areas, copper pour, thermal relief, fanout, 3D view of your PCB design from any angle, Gerber file output and much more.
Advanced presentation tools. Make stand-out reports and presentations of schematic diagrams, annotations, formulas provided by symbolic analysis, Bode plots, Nyquist diagrams, poles and zeros, transient responses, digital waveforms, and other data using linear or logarithmic scales. Customize presentations using TINA’s advanced drawing tools to control text, fonts, axes, line width, color and layout. You can create, edit and print documents directly inside TINA or cut & paste your results into your favorite word processing or DTP package.source

5Spice offers easy to use analog circuit simulation for the typical circuit designer.

5Spice provides Spice specific schematic entry, the ability to define and save an unlimited number of analyses and integrated graphing of simulation results. Plus easy inclusion of Spice/PSpice® subcircuits from a user expandable library. The focus is on analog circuit analysis and circuit design at the component level. Student level MOSFET IC design is also supported but not compatible with HSpice® model libraries.

5Spice provides the analysis capabilities needed by experienced circuit designers while remaining easy to use – a big step up from student oriented Spice programs.source