Mentor, Agilent Pair Up for RF Design

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WILSONVILLE, Ore. and SANTA CLARA, Calif. PCB design tool provider Mentor Graphics Corp. and Agilent Technologies Inc. jointly developed an RF design solution to improve productivity for the design of RF circuits on PCBs. The partnership targets shorter PCB design cycle times with increased collaboration, particularly in mixed-technology designs, which incorporate RF, analog, and digital components.

PCB mixed-signal designers can concurrently design a PCB using Mentor's Expedition Enterprise or Board Station XE flows then integrate it with Agilent's Advanced Design System (ADS) electronic design automation (EDA) software for RF design and simulation. The collaboration to develop the RF product has occurred over two years. Key benefits include automated design changes, simultaneous designing across multiple disciplines, and fewer design simulations prior to manufacturing. Linking to the Agilent ADS gives designers access to the full PCB with Agilent's suite of RF-specific design and analysis tools.

System designs incorporating digital, analog, and RF on the same PCB for wireless, handheld, and telecom industries are on the rise, said Henry Potts, VP and GM, Mentor's Systems Design Division. Prior generations of mixed-technology PCBs typically fell under military/aerospace applications with longer lead times. "Designing modern mixed-technology systems requires tight integration of the physical layout environments and their respective simulation tools for optimized performance and short design cycle times. Collaboration with Agilent to integrate its RF specialized tools with the Mentor PCB systems design flows adds capabilities needed to solve the complex multi-mode system issues," he added. Mentor and Agilent announced that the integrated product targets designs with multi-layer and multifunctional systems sensitive to electrical interference between technologies, power differences, and other complexities. Mentor's tooling allows automatic generation of parametrically synthesized shapes, including multi-shape RF circuits, rather than manual drawing. "We spend three months or more in an eight-month development cycle writing custom code to move RF layouts from ADS to Mentor," said Tom Gray, spectrum analyzer project engineer with Agilent, also a customer. "We have a dedicated person whose sole role is to accurately move designs from ADS to Mentor. Dynamically linking ADS with Expedition could cut development time by as much as half and provide significant cost savings."Agilent's ADS is a high-frequency, high-speed EDA software platform. It offers complete design integration to designers of products such as cellular and portable phones, pagers, wireless networks, radar and satellite communications systems, and high-speed digital serial links. Mentor Graphics' Expedition Enterprise and Board Station XE design flows provide advanced PCB systems design technologies and addresses time to market, development and product costs, and the competitiveness.

The RF design solution is available as an option to Mentor's Expedition Enterprise and Board Station XE flows. For more information, see www.agilent.com and www.mentor.com.