Industry News

Ansoft Designer/Nexxim Version 5.0

Ansoft Designer was introduced to the RF/microwave industry when “The New World of Communications Design Software” appeared as a cover feature in Microwave Journal back in March 2001 (see Figure 1 ). Ansoft, now a division of ANSYS Inc., had developed a new design environment from the ground up,...
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Setting Strategies for Planar Dividers/Combiners

In building a strategy for effective integrated-circuit design, it is important to understand the characteristics of different RF and microwave planar dividers/combiners. Optimization of the design process for dividers and combiners can reduce unnecessary costs and design iterations, thus allowing designers time to improve the quality of the product....
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Counting the Days…

Did you know that February was among the last two months (along with January) to be added to the Roman calendar? According to Wikipedia, the Romans originally considered winter to be a“month-less” period. NFL fans experience a similar feeling on the morning after the Super Bowl, which, coincidentally, is...
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Direction Matters: Including Substrate Anisotropy in Planar Circuit Design Flow

In the late 1970s, when one of the authors (Rautio) first got started in microwaves, one of his first tasks was to design filters on alumina for Landsat IV. The design was carefully performed using the commonly assumed substrate dielectric constant of 9.8. Even so, several design iterations were...
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Software Update

Simulation Software ANSYS Inc. announced the release of ANSYS® Engineering Knowledge Manager™ (ANSYS® EKM™) 2.0, a product focused on simulation process and data management (SPDM). The solution set addresses some real-world challenges that engineers face, such as how to better manage, share and reuse simulation data as well as...
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The Puzzler - February 2010

Components, Boards & Systems Download the Puzzler Download the Puzzler (PDF) Across 1 Amplifier that uses polar coordinates representation of a signal-vector instead of traditional Cartesian I-Q representation (3 words) 7 Uses finite element math to approximate how a circuit will behave (2 words) 9 When the dielectric constant...
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Market Watch

The end-of-life for a semiconductor product can leave OEMs of systems with long lifecycles scrambling for a supply of vital parts, forcing them into a difficult procurement situation. Some have turned to the so-called “gray market”, a term that refers to the fraudulent manufacturing and distribution of counterfeit semiconductors....
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