COMSOL announces the latest advances in its COMSOL Multiphysics® software to support microwave and RF engineers working on 5G, IoT, automotive radars and SATCOM. With these tools, designers can model different PCB materials and study how they affect the performance of microwave and mmWave circuits. Several of the application examples to guide designers will be introduced at the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) 2019.

“We are particularly excited to demonstrate how to set up and run a simulation to design and evaluate a Grounded Coplanar Waveguide (GCPW) line,” said Jiyoun Munn, technical product manager of the RF Module at COMSOL. “Connectors and low loss materials are the key components across all electronic devices and systems. Their reliability is critical in circuits that transmit and receive information.”

The use of simulation to achieve low insertion loss and reliable circuit performance in a design, requires choosing accurate material properties such as relative dielectric constant and loss tangent, while also considering surface roughness effects in the computer model.

“As the frequency increases, maintaining the impedance become more complex, as small quirks arising from the geometry or selected materials can be magnified,” explains Bill Rosas, co-founder of Signal Microwave. “Simulation allows us to ensure that these critical pieces of RF infrastructure are optimized for 5G communications.”

Designing components ready for 5G, IoT, automotive radars and SATCOM will require multiphysics modeling. Using COMSOL Multiphysics microwave and RF designers can couple electromagnetic simulations with heat transfer, structural mechanics, fluid flow, and other physical phenomena, allowing them to represent coupled physics effects as they would occur in the real world. That means being able to accurately investigate designs and fully benefit from the virtual prototyping capabilities multiphysics simulation offers.