AWR's Unique Program Lets Graduate-Level Students
Design, Fabricate, and Test MMICs
Article describes unique partnership between University of Colorado, AWR, and
TriQuint Semiconductor
for preparing students to face the real-world of M&RF design
Sherry Hess
President of Marketing
AWR Corp.
(310) 726-3000
hess@awrcorp.com
February 24, 2009 -- THE STORY: Most graduate-level engineering students studying
microwave theory are fortunate to virtually design and fabricate hybrid microwave circuits, but few get the chance
to not only design MMICs but transfer their designs to a foundry, obtain working devices, and evaluate their
actual performance against simulated results as well.
Thanks to an innovative program between the University of
Colorado at Boulder, AWR, and TriQuint Semiconductor, this has become a reality for students in the computer-aided
active microwave circuit design course taught by Prof. Zoya Popovic.
Prof. Popovic is the Hudson Moore Jr.
chairperson in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at the University of Colorado at
Boulder. She tasked students to design a MMIC in support of their respective thesis research projects, which are
funded by government agencies and private industry.
Each MMIC was designed using AWR's Microwave Office(R)
software and verified for manufacturability using the ICED feature in Microwave Office 2008. AWR's process design
kit (PDK) for TriQuint's TQPED 0.5-µm E/D pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (pHEMT) process was then
employed to easily transfer the design to fabrication.
TriQuint provided the University of Colorado with
one quarter of a gallium arsenide (GaAs) wafer, and the devices were fabricated in roughly a month's time. The
students then characterized them with a probe station, and in some cases packaged them for full testing.
Dr. Popovic now looks to the next course -- and a new and larger crop of 23 graduate students.
The
complete story about the innovative collaboration between Dr. Popavic, AWR, and TriQuint is available at
www.awrcorp.com.
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About AWR
AWR is the innovation leader in high-frequency EDA software that dramatically
reduces development time and cost for products employed in wireless, high-speed wired broadband, aerospace and
defense, and electro-optical applications. The company's core technology is unique among high-frequency EDA
platforms in that it is inherently open and flexible. AWR continually strengthens its product portfolio with
innovative new technologies that enable faster, more streamlined product development, the most recent of which are
the ACE™, RFA™, and AXIEM™ tools. The privately-held company has thousands of active users and is headquartered at
1960 East Grand Avenue, Suite 430, El Segundo, Calif. 90245. For more information about AWR and its products,
please visit
www.awrcorp.com.
(c) 2009 AWR Corporation. All rights reserved. AWR, the AWR logo, and Microwave Office are registered
trademarks of AWR Corporation.
Analyst, AWR Design Environment, ACE, AXIEM, RFA, and Visual System Simulator are trademarks of AWR
Corporation. All others may be trademarks of their respective holders.
Posted 2/24/2009
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