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active devices (transistors). APLAC,
the trade name of NI AWR Design
Environment’s
high-frequency
circuit simulation technology, is
seamlessly integrated into both
Microwave Office and Analog Office
circuit design tools. It has been
developed to minimize memory
requirements and simulation run
times while maintaining accuracy
for RF/microwave designs. To
address nonlinear devices for
communication systems, APLAC
now includes a time-variant HB
(circuit envelope) simulator capable
of addressing circuits excited by
non-periodic signal sources such
as modulated RF signals. The
associated measurements provide
the time-varying voltage or current
of a particular carrier and the
associated spectrum surrounding
Figure 3. Mesh of 3D planar 3 x 3 patch antenna array and radiation patterns in AXIEM.
surface roughness impacts electrical
behavior, such as insertion loss.
In addition, Analyst V13 also
introduces new 3D editor
functionality and improvements
targeting drawing (sketcher)
functions and solid object
controls, materials and attributes
organization in the browser tree,
auto-complete for parameter and
variable expression, and variable
grouping and sorting, to highlight a
select few.
Third-Party EM
Technologies
The AWR Connected™ family of
solutions that link NI AWR software
to third-party solutions is now
enhanced to further automate the
flow of layout data from NI AWR
Design Environment into partner EM
products. In V13, AWR Connected
for EM simulators, which includes
ANSYS HFSS, CST, and Sonnet, is
more robust and fully bi-directional.
After the layout is created in the
Microwave Office layout editor,
third-party EM tools can readily
be selected as the EM simulator of
choice (Figure 4) and the resulting
dataset is automatically imported
back into Microwave Office to tune,
optimize, perform yield analysis,
and verify results.
Circuit/System
Simulation and Models/
Libraries
Harmonic Balance
Technology
Harmonic balance simulation is an
essential technology in analyzing RF/
microwave nonlinear circuits with
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