RF IC simulation: state-of-the-art and future trends

The change from mainly professional wireless applications to a consumer market has severe implications for the total design process. Where in the past there was time to build and measure several prototypes, nowadays the demands on time-to-market, time-to-quality, price, production volume, etc. are so severe that designers have to resort to simulation. In a marketing window of only a few months there clearly is no time for several iterations of these systems-on-silicon. Although the RF part of these systems constitutes only a minor part of the total design area, it presents a major challenge in the total design cycle. This challenge is caused not only by the analogue/RF nature of the design but also by the lack of appropriate tools, models and design flows. Because the demand for RF simulation tools on this scale is relatively new, the developments of tools (the underlying principles and the commercial implementation there of) are lagging behind the designers´ needs. It is clear that we are only in the start-up phase of RF tooling and RF design flow development. Nevertheless, recently a lot of progress has been made in the research of mathematical principles for RF simulation. A number of these new ideas are already available in commercial software. This paper deals with an overview of principles of RF simulation, zooms in on the current limitations of the methods and discusses some anticipated future directions