Applied Wave Research Inc. (AWR), El Segundo, CA., has finalized an agreement with the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) Engineering Development Group to provide electronic design automation (EDA) products to be used for RF, microwave and millimeter-wave design. ATNF will use AWR's Microwave Office software for designing state-of-the-art, cryogenically cooled receivers and associated components.

Article Tools

• 

The ATNF Engineering Development Group, led by Dr. Warwick Wilson, has a staff of about 25 engineers and technicians and is responsible for the design and construction of essentially all ATNF front-end receiver systems. The front ends of these receivers are cooled by closed-cycle liquid helium refrigeration to minimize thermal noise. The group has expertise in the areas of passive microwave devices, high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) low-noise amplifiers (LNAs), cryogenics, RF and input frequency (IF) systems. Recently, much of its development effort has been focused on the design of broadband indium phosphide (InP) microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMICs) for cryogenic (approximately -250° C) operation at frequencies over 100 GHz.

“We evaluated EDA software from all the leading vendors, looking particularly at the accuracy of the models at frequencies of 100 GHz and above,” said Dr. Russell Gough, ATNF/CTIP MMIC team member. “After comparing many measured and simulated results, we chose the Microwave Office product based on its tight integration of layout and schematic capture, and its seamless linkage with inbuilt electromagnetic (EM) analysis. We are confident that the Microwave Office software will provide us with the extra accuracy we require for our next generation of MMIC designs.”

Ron Patston, vice president of Asia Pacific operations for AWR added, “The selection of Microwave Office design suite as the standard design tool at the ATNF demonstrates the importance of integrated design solutions for leading-edge research groups and underscores the strengths of AWR's new architecture and accurate models.”