AWR Announces Visual System Simulator 2004 for Design of Next-Generation Communication Systems Latest Version Delivers Unique New Technology for RF Budget Analysis
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. - May 3, 2004 - Applied Wave Research, Inc. (AWRTM) a leading provider of high-frequency electronic design automation (EDA) tools, today announced Visual System SimulatorTM (VSS) 2004 software for next-generation design of complete, end-to-end communication systems. The VSS 2004 product has been enhanced to provide support for the Linux platform, radio-frequency (RF) budget analysis for calculating cascaded performance of the RF link, and phase lock loop (PLL) simulation blocks for interactive investigation of the dynamics of frequency synthesizers and frequency and phase modulators. Also included are core enhancements, including tighter integration with AWR's Microwave Office™ and Analog Office™ design suites, the addition of adaptive behavioral models, and enhanced measurements.
"This latest release of the VSS solution advances AWR's mission to dramatically increase productivity by providing the most open, integrated environment in the industry," said James Spoto, president and CEO of AWR. "VSS 2004 software offers new features and tighter integration with our system and RF/microwave software suites, making it easier than ever for designers to work together within a single environment to perform interactive, top-down analysis of analog and digital communications systems."
The VSS solution embodies an advanced, time-based complex envelope simulation engine coupled with a circuit simulation tool integrated in the AWR Design Environment™. The VSS integrated technology provides the unique ability to establish the right system architecture and formulate suitable specifications for each of the underlying components. This reduces time-to-market by eliminating iterations and rework, and cuts system costs by ensuring that components are not over-specified and thus unnecessarily expensive.
RF Budget Analysis
RF budget analysis is AWR's unique new solution that enables designers, for the first time, to calculate cascaded performance of the RF link. Traditional RF/analog system analysis commonly requires several tools to achieve a complete analysis of end-to-end performance. VSS 2004 software, however, provides engineering teams with an efficient and comprehensive platform for making RF cascade calculations at interior points of the RF link to perform an error vector magnitude (EVM) measurement, all within a single system diagram. Working in one environment provides a seamless flow of information between traditional systems engineers and RF/analog engineers and enables designers to quickly discover system deficiencies and to eliminate design turns.
PLL Simulation Blocks
The addition of dedicated behavioral PLL blocks into VSS 2004 software enables designers to interactively investigate the dynamics of frequency synthesizers, frequency/phase modulators, and frequency/phase demodulators. Through simulations, engineers can establish practical PLL design guidelines. Ultimately, the best loop bandwidth, phase noise, transient response, and phase margin can be determined by working with the VSS 2004 PLL behavioral blocks.
Core Enhancements for 2004
AWR continues to enhance the integration of VSS technology with Microwave Office and Analog Office design suites through the AWR Design Environment. VSS 2004 software provides users with a seamless connection to incorporate directly into the system diagram both oscillator phase noise and mixer-spur measurements obtained from circuit designs. Upon completion of an oscillator's phase noise analysis in the Microwave Office software, its single-sideband phase noise profile can be directly imported into the VSS phase noise model. In the VSS design suite; for example, the effect of the phase noise on bit error rate (BER) performance can be determined. A circuit-level mixer design can be accurately simulated in VSS software by exporting the Microwave Office spur analysis results as an MxN spur table into the system "file based" mixer. In addition, the VSS frequency-dependent nonlinear model has been improved, allowing the simulation of a frequency-dependent amplifier design in Microwave Office design suite to be realized at the system level.
Adaptive behavioral models, such as least-mean-square (LMS) and recursive-least-square (RLS) equalizers, have also been added. One use of an equalization system is to compensate for transmission-channel impairments such as frequency-dependent phase and amplitude distortion. Besides correcting for channel frequency-response anomalies, an equalizer can be used to cancel the effects of multipath signal components. The resulting equalizer coefficients that are generated can be exported to external files to be used, for example, in a stand-alone finite impulse response filter (FIR).
Core models such as a look-up table, variable gain amplifier (VGA), and align are included in the VSS 2004 product. One use of the look-up table is to simulate the function of a variable voltage attenuator (VVA) or, more generically, to simulate a nonlinear transfer function. The VGA model can be used to analyze the behavioral characteristic of an automatic gain control (AGC) system. The align block analyzes two signals, a reference signal, and a degraded version of the reference signal, for timing alignment and gain and phase distortion. The signals are then delayed as necessary to time-align the signals on output. The corrupted signal is gain- and phase-compensated to minimize the effects of gain and phase distortion. Typically this model is used prior to making an EVM measurement.
Additional signal sources intended for use when performing RF link analysis and/or conformance testing have been added to the extensive list of VSS 2004 models. The new models are similar to the existing 802.11a/b/g signal generators in that they use the proper modulation and have the correct spectral qualities. The new models consist of digital video broadcast (DVB) and code division multiples access 2000 (CMDA2000) signal sources. Engineers can also take advantage of the wide range of VSS primitive models, such as forward error correction (FEC) models, and add additional features to these signal sources. A third-generation (3G) design studio exists for engineers who want to create 3G wideband CDMA (WCDMA) frequency division duplex (FDD) "bit accurate" signals.
VSS 2004 measurements have been enhanced as necessary. Root raised cosine filtering (RRC) is added to the adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) measurement window to meet the needs of engineers performing 3G WCDMA FDD conformance testing. The direct importation of spectral masks has also been added to the VSS measurement window. This feature is particularly useful for engineering teams performing conformance tests using today's wireless communication signals. In addition, through the use of systems annotations, engineers can monitor at each node in the system such metrics as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), signal power, and signal delay.
Seamless Integration with T&M Equipment
Through the AWR Design Environment, AWR's TestWave™ software integrates real-world hardware measurements for a wide variety of the industry's most popular test and measurement (T&M) equipment with VSS computer simulation, providing wireless system designers with a complete integration of the design process. Together, the VSS 2004 and TestWave solutions combine schematic simulation, test signal generation, and test and measurement verification. This capability enables designers to perform computer trade-off studies with "hardware-in-the-loop," and the ability to access these two previously disjointed phases of the development process from the same environment saves design time.
Price and Availability
The Visual System Simulator (VSS) 2004 product supports Windows NT4, 2000, XP, and Linux and will be available in the fall of 2004. U.S. list prices for perpetual licenses range from $15,000 - $24,000 depending upon configurations. For more information on product pricing and availability, call 310-726-3000. For product pricing and availability outside the U.S., please contact an AWR local sales representative.
About Applied Wave Research, Inc.
Applied Wave Research is a leading supplier of high-frequency electronic design automation (EDA) products for the design of wireless telecommunications equipment, semiconductors, high-speed computers, networking systems, and a variety of other electronics-based products. AWR is a privately held company and has development offices, sales offices, training centers, and global distribution. AWR launched its first product in 1998 and today has over 400 customer companies worldwide, including virtually every major high-frequency electronic component and system supplier. The company is located at 1960 East Grand Avenue, Suite 430, El Segundo, California 90245. For more information about AWR and its products, please visit www.mwoffice.com or call 310-726-3000.
John Lane, a principal engineer at M/A-COM, a world-leading developer and manufacturer of radio frequency (RF) and microwave semiconductors, components and IP networks solutions, used VSS 2003 to explore an alternate implementation of modulation in M/A-COM's products. This involved driving the VSS simulation with existing Matlab modulation code, then decomposing and re-implementing it with the proposed modulation scheme. The scheme in turn drove a data-based nonlinear representation of a power amplifier so that adjacent channel power could be assessed. "VSS was an effective integrative and analytical tool for the effort, allowing serious assessment of the proposed modulation in a short amount of time," John comments. "AWR support was excellent."
"In the design of our state-of-the-art wireless systems, VSS 2003 has been instrumental in our understanding of the performance of our mesh networking cells," said Jay Kruse, design engineer for Tropos Networks, a leading supplier of equipment used to build metro-scale Wi-Fi networks. "Our design team has been very pleased with the support we have received from AWR and their commitment to our company's success."
The General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (GDAIS) group, a leading provider of transformational mission solutions in command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, recently used VSS 2004 beta version to verify the performance of their high-reliability spacecraft transceiver payload. The payload consisted of L, C and Ku-band double conversion transmitter and triple conversion receiver. Non-linear spurious noise, thermal noise, intermodulation noise, and phase noise analysis was done on the complete chains consisting of imported MWO circuits and macro models based on published vendor specifications. "The unique open, integrated environment provided in VSS enabled us to study the effects of the non-linear distortion on our communications link margin using real digital modulated analog waveforms," said Stephan VanFleteren, senior lead engineer.
