San Francisco - Ansoft Corp. has updated its flagship High Frequency Structure Simulator to model the radiation patterns of 3-D metal structures. While HFSS version 9 carves out new territory as an entire design flow built around electromagnetics, it retains its links to the Cadence Virtuoso and Mentor Graphics BoardStation design environments.

With rising interest in wireless and high-frequency system design, HFSS increasingly models radio frequency and microwave components, like antennas and arrays, IC packages and lead frames.

The latest version, first demonstrated at the 40th Design Automation Conference last month, helps to simplify model generation and analysis and offers advanced data management and design features, said Brad Brim, HFSS product marketing manager at Ansoft (Pittsburgh). Version 9 for Windows is shipping now, and versions running under the Solaris and HP-UX operating systems will be available this summer. Prices for HFSS version 9 start at $40,000.

The graphics interface-for modeling magnetic field radiators like antennas, connector pins and IC pins-offers the ability to partition and blow up a 3-D structure on-screen. While mesh analysis has always been an Ansoft forte, the new interface lets users highlight sections of the mesh with translucency and animation. Such graphics are meant to aid in visualizing EM radiation paths and patterns from the structure.

The graphical design management tree lets users input parameters like dimensions, shapes and electrical characteristics and do analysis operations. It also provides access to multiple designs concurrently.

Engineers can tailor the HFSS design flow to their needs, Ansoft said, with customized Windows, dialog boxes, toolbars and menu items. Users can access commands through the main menu, toolbars, project tree and context-sensitive menus. In addition, the customization and control may be used to define parameterized geometries, implement custom analysis flow or control design flow.

With Ansoft's Optimetrics module, for example, optimization and parametric sweeps are automated and accessed from the same project tree within the desktop. These design techniques are augmented by sensitivity and statistical analyses, which have historically depended on powerful machinery and lengthy simulation runs. Here, the same simulation data automates design for manufacturing by applying the implicit parameterization to HFSS objects.

A major issue for RF design-which ordinarily depends on the wavelengths of transmission frequencies-has been the translation between electrical engineering and mechanical databases. With AnsoftLinks, users can integrate HFSS into existing EDA and mechanical CAD design flows, with links to tools from Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys and Zuken.

To ship data back into electrical engineering design flows, broadband circuit models support HSpice, Spectre RF and PSpice as well as Ansoft's Maxwell Spice. Fully parametric circuit models also are available to support efficient high-frequency circuit design in Ansoft Designer and other circuit and system design tools.

Ansoft said it is also working on a relationship with National Instruments Corp. (Austin, Texas) that would close the loop between design and test. In principle, data collected by National's test setups could increase the accuracy of Ansoft's parameterization and modeling. Simulations would similarly be improved by using National Instruments' "virtual instrument" in the simulation effort for Ansoft Designer.

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