EM and Math Software Aids RF/Microwave Design

摘要

Software plays an increas-ingly important role in high-frequency design,rnespecially as more func-tions are integrated into smaller circuits. Design engineers have a wide choice of computer-aided-engineering (CAE) software tools at their disposal, from full-featured, multi-program suites to single-function utilities. Two of the more versatile types of tools, mathematical and electromagnetic (EM) programs, help analyze a wide range of designs, from antennas to waveguide.rnEM simulation programs apply Maxwell's equations to high-frequency and other structures to calculate the EM field behavior of those structures. Analysis can be presented as two-dimensional (2D planar) or three-dimensional (3D) field information, or a combination of the two, as 2.5-D studies. Because EM simulators rely on compute-intensive algorithms to solve the matrices representing Maxwell's equations at each frequency, older programs have required either long solution times for complex structures, or the processing power of computer clusters to reduce the computational time.