Michael Ashman 
Senior Principal Engineer, Wireless Systems Segment 
Tyco Electronics 

"The accuracy of the new Co-calibrated™ Port de-embedding in Version 11 is impressive, a truly enabling breakthrough for optimizing microwave and millimeter wave circuit performance. We able to achieve more optimal designs in substantially less time. This is a great product!” 

David Bates 
Chief Scientist Dielectric Laboratories

“A high performance process is only part of the complete picture; advanced MMIC design techniques are of equal importance. For a product to be competitive, it must demonstrate state-of-the-art performance at low cost. For a given process technology, the cost to manufacture the MMICs is reduced by minimizing the amount of GaAs real estate consumed by the die. This is accomplished with MMIC layout techniques for maximum circuit compaction followed by extensive numerical simulation to properly account for all electromagnetic (EM) interaction between components. As EM simulation tools and computing technology become faster and more advanced, larger portions of a design may be simulated, thus allowing the designer to more aggressively integrate circuits with increased confidence of actual performance that will be achieved. MMIC die area compaction is illustrated by TriQuint Semiconductor’s Ka-band power amplifier product line. For example, consider the 4 W 30 GHz power amplifier MMICs shown above. The third generation product uses 3 times less GaAs wafer (die) area than the original with no sacrifice of electrical performance. In this particular case, Sonnet was used to perform the full-wave electromagnetic simulation to successfully achieve this level of compaction. Simulation tools like Sonnet Software have become an integral part of our design flow here at TriQuint Semiconductor and it is fast becoming one of the standardized EM tool sets within our design engineering group.” 

Charles F. Campbell, Ph.D. 
Design Engineering Director 
TriQuint Semiconductor Texas 

“My research group at UCSD relies on Sonnet for virtually all our EM simulations in RF MEMS, microwave and mm-wave RFIC design, and for complicated filter development including channelizers with more than 20 ports. 

In RF MEMS, Sonnet is a very powerful tool capable of analyzing planar resonators with RF MEMS devices, even though there is more than 100x dimensional difference between the resonator and the RF MEMS switched capacitors. In RFIC, we have found that Sonnet consistently provides accurate inductance and Q prediction of planar spiral inductors and complicated 3-D transmission-line geometries on silicon, leading to “first-pass” circuit success. We use extensively Sonnet’s multi-port features for filter optimization and RFIC design. For example, by placing extra optimization ports in our Sonnet models and integrating the results with a standard circuit simulator, we are able to quickly optimize RFIC designs. My graduate students also indicate that Sonnet’s graphical user interface is the easiest they have ever used. 

Sonnet is an integral part of our work and every graduate student in my group learns Sonnet.” 

Gabriel M. Rebeiz, Ph.D. 
Dept.of Electrical and Computer Engineering 
University of California at San Diego

“Anokiwave relies on Sonnet to provide quality designs. In our experience of using Sonnet for over a decade, we have yet to find a case where the measurements have differed significantly from Sonnet’s EM simulated expectations. Sonnet is an integral part of our design process. Thanks to Sonnet, Anokiwave has been able to provide novel and quality designs that often meet first pass success.”

Nitin Jain, Ph.D. 
Chief Technology Officer 
Anokiwave