STMICROELECTRONICS has chosen Agilent’s Electromagnetic Professional (EMPro) software to develop its integrated passive devices (IPDs).
The use of IPD technology is a growing trend in the development of RF systems for mobile applications with a frequency range of 800 MHz and above. Compared to traditional surface mount device technology, IPD technology results in a dramatic size reduction and enables more consistent, reliable performance.
Inductors, capacitors, resistors, baluns, couplers, stubs and other devices available in IPD technologies are the elemental components used to design complex analogue filters, combiners, di/triplexers and power adaptation stages.
IPD, like other technologies, is subject to its own design challenges. Designers seek to reduce the number of costly prototype iterations. To do so, designers require powerful full-wave 3-D electromagnetic solvers to accurately predict the frequency response of IPD designs in various environments, optimise those designs and ensure first-run silicon success.
Agilent says STMicroelectronics France chose its EMPro because it couples accuracy and speed that underlie best-in-class commercial solutions, with design-flow integration and a powerful Python-based programming environment to automate the design process.
STMicroelectronics has incorporated EMPro into its internal design flow called VLE2EMS (Virtuoso Layout Editor to Electromagnetic Solvers), which generates ready-to-solve EM projects directly from Cadence Virtuoso.