Who is the best RFIC simlator?

Normal spice simulator with FFT can do RF simulation.

ADS is a not bad tool,though some simulations are not very accurate.mom simulation is a powerful tool for high frequency simulation.

ADS is best simulator RF IC.may be AWR MWO.but prefered is
Aplac HB!!!

May be HSPICE, Aplac HB, AWR MWO, so on...

Now, Aplac is in the AWR Microwave Office package.
(Microwave office, Visual System Simulator, Analog Office, Aplac)

plz tel me frm any site i can download the freeware simulator
-sarin

Ansoft designer is better

My opinion is:

the best software is ADS without bugs, this means that the best microwave CAD is a dream!!!

hello
i think cadence/spectre is the best for rf/analog ic design

I would agree with you ravet... the problem is that GaAs foundries don't provide "design-kit" for cadence

@ds is great for professinal designs and simulations
but you need time to learn using @ds

Hi,
For RF simulation Agilent ADS is the best EDA tool. Although the accuracy is lower but that can be improved be tightening some of the parameters, the only trade off is increase in the time taken for simulation.
Apart from that it also has lesser convergence problems.

thanks
sarfraz

Added after 5 minutes:

Hi,
Agilent ADS is the best software for RF circuit simulation. Although its accuracy is lower by default, it can be increased by tightening some of the parameters.
It is faster and has lesse convergence issues.

thanks
sarfraz

I think ADS is the best in accuracy and takes low simulation time

accuracy... accuracy...

what does you mean for accuracy?

you mean that the errors on a simulation parameter is 1 part over million instead of 1.2 part over million?

yeah in that case you are right ads is better

I think too that ads is better, and I don't think that it need a longer learning curve, but what I ate of this software is the long list of bug that I found on each version relased...

Obviously the bugs come out when advanced features are used and not at a first look

Sometimes I do sales, and in that case I use the word "accuracy". Other times I do engineering, and then I use the word, "error". While the two words are opposites, they both describe exactly the same thing.

For em analysis, error can range from 5% down to below 0.01%. In a very very few cases, em analysis can provide answers that are exact to within numerical precision, but this requires specialized code. For example, this is possible for Zo of lossless infinitely thin stripline.

If you know the correct answer in advance, you can always "tune" and em analysis to give a very accurate answer (for example, by precisely adjusting the aspect ratio of the subsection size), but this is useful only for sales to engineers who are not very smart (our customers, I work for Sonnet, are smart, so we do not do this).

More typically, accuracy is determined by doing a convergence analysis. Keep cutting the cell size in half (on a simple circuit) and see how it converges. If the difference between each successive analysis is cut by about half, you have a good idea what the error is. This is the typical (with occasional exceptions) case for Sonnet. A nice smooth convergence is always best.

If the answer oscillates about some final correct answer as you keep cutting the cell size in half, it is much harder to determine the error.

If no convergence analysis is done, i.e., if only one em analysis is done of a given circuit, then "accuracy" becomes a philosophical/political "yes it is"/"no it isn't" argument. In this case, it is not an engineering discussion. I think this description fits much of the information provided in the above posts.

For RFIC, where cost of a mistake is very high, it is best to analyze the circuit with at least two different tools from two different vendors. Now, if there are significant differences, you MUST understand why those differences are there before fabrication.

If I may make a promotional sales statement for our own tool, which works well in conjuction with ADS, MWO, Eagleware, and Cadence, (whichever one you think is best) we have some new features that will have significant impact in RFIC design. The response from our half dozen beta testers is strong. Please feel free to contact us if interested in using our "accurate" em software for RFIC.

@rautio

Thanks for your reply

I'm an ADS user (in the past I used also MWO), anyway our department have licenses for both software


I'm not satisfied also with ADS, due to layout lack of features, em versus circuital co-simulations bugs... and so on (I don't want to destroy ADS)

In which way your cad interact with Cadence?

I know that Cadence has the best layout tool and it is very versatile, but I don't think that GaAs foundry makes available design-kit for Cadence (i.e. OMMIC)

Furthermore Cadence runs only under unix environment :-( and for most users this could be quite tricky


I think that there must be a big step forward in the MMIC design software... Users are bored

wasm,

Fire up Microwave Office again if you have not used it in a while. The EM extraction features are very powerful; allowing one to assign arbitrary metal and break a circuit into EM subsections. Sonnet of course interfaces seamlessly.

My opinion, MWO is far ahead of ADS for MMIC layout. I have not used ADS in several years but the Triquint PDKs for ADS did not have the automated metal conenction features that MWO has. Of course thinks may be different now.

I have not seen Analog Office (the silicon side of Microwave office) mentioned in this thread. Is anyone using it?

Thanks madengr, I'will try MWO again, to give it another chance...

but I think that the layout tools are not changed so much

Hi Wasm -- We have customers on both ADS and MWO, some use both. Both are very powerful frameworks. The MWO em tool is based on the same theory as Sonnet (my publications were used to create it), and it is a good tool. However, enhancing our em tool has been our only focus for nearly 3 decades, so when you reach the limits of the MWO tool, then is time to bring our tool in.

The interfaces with MWO, ADS, and Cadence are all bi-directional. Right now the Cadence interface is the best, check our web site for full details. You can also make a posting on the Sonnet forum (which is becoming quite popular lately) and get input from actual users. (There are NO sonnet employees pretending to be customers, here or there.) The ADS interface is getting some very serious enhancements (kudos to Agilent for helping with this effort!) and as soon as it is out will be our best interface, possibly including free interface to free SonnetLite (not yet decided).

In fact, you should be able to do layout in ADS, MWO, Cadence, or Sonnet, and transfer the layout and additional data between all four tools using Sonnet relatively easily.

How about RFDE...?