iCD Adds Coplanar Waveguide Planner to iCD Design Integrity Software

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In-Circuit Design Pty Ltd (iCD), Australia, developer of the iCD Design Integrity software, has released the new iCD CPW Planner to be incorporated as part of the 2017 release of its suite of high-speed PCB design tools.

“Coplanar waveguides (CPWs) have been used for many years in RF and microwave design as they reduce radiation loss, at extremely high frequencies, compared to traditional microstrip. And now, as edge rates continue to rise, they are coming back into vogue,” said Barry Olney, CEO of iCD. “Today’s high-speed, fast rise-time serial interfaces are prone to excess loss, in the transmission lines, which is a major cause of signal integrity issues. Minimizing this loss reduces jitter and improves the bit error rate (BER) and inter-symbol interference (ISI).” 

The CPW offers several advantages over a conventional microstrip transmission line: 

• Simplifies fabrication.
• Facilitates easy shunt as well as series surface mounting of active and passive devices.
• Can eliminate the need for via holes and wraparound edge plating.
• Reduces radiation loss at very high microwave frequencies.

Furthermore, the impedance is determined by the ratio of trace width to clearance, so size reduction is possible without limit, the only penalty being higher losses.

“The new iCD CPW Planner has five popular generic CPW structures that model single and dual (differential) CPWs, with and without ground reference planes, plus a dual Coplanar Strip (CPS) which has no ground reference plane or copper pours. Materials maybe inserted, from the extensive iCD Dielectric Materials Library featuring over 30,850 rigid and flexible materials up to 100GHz, to dramatically increase accuracy at extremely high microwave frequencies,” said Olney.

Click here for a quick demonstration video of the iCD Coplanar Waveguide Planner.

About In-Circuit Design Pty Ltd

In-Circuit Design Pty Ltd, based in Australia, developer of the iCD Design Integrity software incorporating the iCD Stackup, PDN and CPW Planner software, is a PCB Design Service Bureau and specialist in board level simulation. For further information or to download a free evaluation of the software, please visit www.icd.com.au.