- Keysight Technologies’ latest software suite comes with a host of features that helps design engineers to quicken their R&D work
- Due to the rapid emergence of 5G and the challenges posed by it, the software suite can help achieve design requirements of 5G standard
With 5G rapidly gaining broader acceptance, network operators are gradually transitioning from 4G and rolling out commercial 5G around the world. Equipment manufacturers and suppliers need to optimize performance, cost and time-to-market in their designs for quick 5G deployments. However, higher frequencies along with increasing design integration and 5G complexity require a unified, end-to-end approach to eliminate delayed design changes and ensure success.
Keysight Technologies has announced the release of the PathWave Design 2021. The latest version is an open, scalable and predictable 5G and mmWave software solution. Through this release, design and validation engineers will be able to accelerate delivery of chip, board and system products by integrating device, circuit and system design with improved performance and accuracy.
Allows best practices across all design phases
PathWave 5G addresses high frequency and complexity with new capabilities across all design phases including simulation to validation, as well as test and manufacturing, allows engineers to reduce the number of hours spent in product development by implementing best practices in their radio frequency/microwave (RF/MW) workflows such as:
- Increasing the speed and reducing the complexity of chip-level analysis and verification with integrated EM simulation.
- Predicting performance at the circuit and system levels using common modulated signals and accurate RF system models.
- Scaling the end-to-end ecosystem from device to circuit to test and manufacturing with model-driven engineering.
- Accelerating the verification process by running simulations in parallel in the high-performance cloud computing.
Keysight’s PathWave Design 2021 software suite enables:
- Power amplifier designers using RF Gallium Nitride (GaN) superior power, size and efficiency advantages to model trapping and thermal effects.
- Front-end module and RF transceiver designers to assemble technologies to model packaging and coupling effects quickly and efficiently.
- System integrators to predict system performance with RF circuits, antennas and modulated signals.
- System architects to accurately perform RF modelling with a combined platform for digital, RF and antenna system simulation.
- Component manufacturers to validate the performance of their designs in target system architectures.
- Phased array designers to conduct fast, accurate beamforming simulations with realistic RF impairment modelling.
“Current design methodologies for 4G and earlier standards use approximate figures of merit to get designs to market quickly,” said Tom Lillig, general manager of PathWave Software Solutions at Keysight Technologies. “This legacy approach is insufficient for modern designs, which increase integration requirements due to 5G broadband modulation schemes. The design techniques developed with previous generations of designs simply aren’t sufficient to meet the 5G standards.”
Keysight’s PathWave Design software suite includes: PathWave Advanced Design System (ADS), PathWave RFIC Design (GoldenGate), PathWave System Design (SystemVue), PathWave EM Design (EMPro) and PathWave Device Modeling (IC-CAP), which deliver the key capabilities needed to address 5G challenges such as radio frequency/microwave (RF/MW) simulation and verification, electronic system-level (ESL) simulation and device modelling to improve design speed, accuracy and robustness.
