High-Performance Simulation of Circuits

Cadence Spectre RF Option provides a comprehensive set of RF analyses to enable design and verification of RFIC designs such as like mixers, transceivers, power amplifiers, and high-speed analog designs like such as dividers, switched capacitors, filters, and phased lock loops (PLLs).

Spectre RF Option also supports simulation with S-parameters of electromagnetic (EM) elements and application-centric analyses like wireless analysis for system-level performance evaluation using standard-compliant signal sources. Tight integration into the Cadence Virtuoso Studio ADE Suite delivers ease of use for simple and complex use models with multiple tests for multiple conditions.

Maximize RF Circuit Simulation Productivity

Comprehensive Analyses Support

Supports all time and frequency domain analyses needed for RFIC design and verification

Scalability

Massively parallelizable multi-threading and distributed computing of RF analyses

Ease of use

Integration of RF capabilities into familiar Virtuoso ADE environment

Complete RFIC Design and Verification Capabilities

Spectre RF Option includes two production-proven RF solvers: a harmonic balance one that uses the frequency-domain, and a time-domain based one that uses shooting Newton methods for high-performance simulation and verification.

Frequency and Time-Domain Analyses for RF Circuits

  • Harmonic balance analysis for single- and multi-tone circuits
  • Time-domain periodic steady-state analyses including periodic AC analysis (PAC), periodic stability analysis (PStab), periodic noise analysis, periodic transfer function analysis (PXF)
  • Small signal analyses including AC, transfer function (XF), stability, noise, distortion to assist the designer in exploring the design space and optimizing their circuit
  • Distributed processing support for harmonic balance (HB) and periodic small signal (PSS) analyses improve turnaround time and leverage machines in the compute farm for large memory footprint simulations
  • Golden reference for oscillator and strong arm latch noise analysis

Simulating Modulated Signals

  • Envelope following analyses simulate complex modulated waveforms of RF systems
  • Rich library of sources and measurements for verifying compliance with wireless standards
  • Powerful fast envelope modeling technology for design verification across corners and process variation
  • Automated set-up and post-processing for analysis of wireless standard compliance

Time-Domain Simulation with S-Parameter Data

  • Validate the quality of S-parameter data for simulation during EM extraction or prior to Spectre simulation
  • Create shareable rational fit models (RFMs), for fast, high-capacity time domain simulation of circuits containing S-parameter data