AWR Press Release - July 20, 2009

AWR Announces Version 2009 of Its Microwave Office® Design Software

Includes patent-pending Multi-Rate Harmonic Balance (MRHB™) simulation
technology that speeds design of complex circuits

El Segundo, Calif. — July 20, 2009 — AWR, the innovation leader in high-frequency electronic design automation (EDA), today announced Version 2009 of its Microwave Office design suite. The latest release of AWR's flagship product features new MRHB technology that dramatically increases the speed and reduces the computer memory required to perform steady-state analysis of complex nonlinear systems with multiple signal sources.

AWR Microwave Office 2009

"MRHB satisfies the needs of our customers to perform steady-state analysis of distributive or dispersive systems with more than two or three signal sources," said Taisto Tinttunen, chief director of engineering of AWR’s APLAC division, who explained the limitation of previous tools and the significance of MRHB. "Harmonic-balance engines traditionally do not scale well as the number of tones increases, so simulating a complete receiver or high-speed digital circuit was extremely difficult or impossible because of the high computational cost of nonlinear model evaluations and the extensive memory utilization.”

“MRHB eliminates this limitation by defining harmonic balance analysis on a block-by-block basis,” Tinttunen continued, “ reducing filtered sources and their harmonics by defining new hybrid tones based on linear combinations of the source tones. As a result, AWR’s MRHB technology makes it possible to simulate designs that were previously beyond the reach of the harmonic balance technique, and provides a 5x speed increase when simulating large, complex multi-tone designs.”

Microwave Office Version 2009 includes a wide array of new features as well, including:

• Expanded support for Open Access (OA) Process Design Kits (PDKs)

As a founding member of the Interoperable PDK Library (IPL) alliance, AWR supports OA PDKs and layout views that enable an interoperable design flow among EDA vendors. They facilitate the seamless exchange of design information between software vendors, foundry partners, and their customers by employing a standard format.

• Constant output power simulation

Many power-related measurements are better specified and analyzed when output power is set to a fixed level rather than varying the input power and manually using the measurement "search" function to determine required output power. This new capability within Microwave Office software eliminates manual, post-processing steps and reduces simulation iterations.

• Enhanced load-pull analysis

The Microwave Office software environment effectively handles data formats from device characterization specialists Maury Microwave and Focus Microwaves. Enhancements to the software’s load-pull analysis, as requested by AWR customers, include dramatic speed improvements as well as the ability to add or remove load-pull data points directly on the Smith Chart.

• Behavioral model support for Mesuro's active load-pull system

Mesuro’s active load-pull system and “Waveform Engineering,” pioneered at Cardiff University, enable the replication of S-parameter concepts within the nonlinear domain. This complete solution simultaneously measures the actual current and voltage at a device under test, allowing designers to view and engineer their waveforms to match theory. From this, a behavioral model, called a "Cardiff model", can be extracted and invoked within Microwave Office Design Environment 2009. As a result, modeling and design engineers can fully characterize their devices or power-amplifiers for any signal and impedance environment.

• Customizable project tree that can reconfigure nodes to allow better organization of large projects supporting hundreds of schematics and graphs.

In addition to these major enhancements, Version 2009 of Microwave Office software includes dozens of other subtle improvements throughout the design environment that increase productivity and enrich the user experience. To learn more, visit www.awrcorp.com/mwo, and AWR.TV.

Availability

Microwave Office Version 2009 in currently in beta-release at selected AWR customers and will be commercially available in Q3/Q4 2009.

© 2009 AWR Corporation. AWR and Microwave Office are registered trademarks of AWR Corporation. All others may be trademarks of their respective holders.

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.

© 2009 AWR Corporation. AWR, the AWR logo, and Microwave Office are registered trademarks, and ACE, AXIEM, RFA, and Visual System Simulator are trademarks of AWR Corporation. All others may be trademarks of their respective holders.

Contact:

Sherry Hess
Vice President of Marketing
AWR Corporation
(310) 726-3000
hess@awrcorp.com

Posted 7/21/2009

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