AMCAD Engineering, a supplier of new RF and microwave solutions for advanced design, announced Version 3.1 of its IVCAD software platform. AMCAD's software suite offers a unique set of tools for RF and microwave measurements, data management and device modelling. By accelerating measurements to design process, using the import and export functionalities, the new IVCAD release is the perfect bridge needed between measurements and RF electronic design automation (EDA) tools.

IVCAD Version 3.1 includes a wide array of new features, including:

• Extended Load-Pull capabilities: this plug-in combines power sweeps and impedance sweeps load-pull measurements to find the optimal load impedance, offering the possibility to visualize the optimal load impedance for any fixed parameter (transistor input power, source power, gain compression, etc.). Using this tool, the load pull engineer save time and avoid new measurements when new optimization criteria are defined.

• Source-Pull converter tool: using the Source-Pull converter plug-in, IVCAD allows real-time observation of source pull measurement results. This patented technique has been developed by AMCAD Engineering in order to facilitate and accelerate the source and load pull measurements of active devices.

• Wafer mapping capabilities: This plug-in allows users to create a visual display of test data, showing parameters distribution on a wafer map.

• Behavioral modelling: IVCAD includes a Volterra model extraction tool, using dynamic 1 kernel volterra series with HF memory.

• FET modelling: this modeling plug-in is a dedicated tool to extract accurate linear and nonlinear compact measurement-based models of field effect transistors (FET). This plug-in address all FET devices (MESFETs, HEMTs, LDMOS) on gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium nitride (GaN), as well as many other technologies such as indium phosphide (InP) or silicium (Si). It allows model parameters extraction and optimization, graphical display of obtained results, and direct link to the main commercial simulators, enabling high-performance model extraction process.