The MathWorks Adds Support For Signal Integrity Engineering To RF Toolbox

Natick, MA -- The MathWorks introduced RF Toolbox 2, which includes new functions that enable signal integrity engineers to design, model, analyze, and visualize networks of radio frequency components commonly found in high-speed digital electronics. With RF Toolbox 2, engineers can model the impedance differences and reflection effects compromising signal distortion that occur with high-speed semiconductor devices connected to backplanes and printed circuit boards. By combining the new modeling capabilities of RF Toolbox with the power of Model-Based Design in MATLAB and Simulink, engineers can reduce the time required to develop I/O circuitry for these devices used throughout the aerospace, defense, communications, and automotive industries.

The added capabilities in RF Toolbox complement the product's existing support for designing, modeling, and analyzing networks of RF components in wireless communications and radar projects. Applying the same workflow, the new version helps engineers design for signal integrity by letting them use network parameters to specify RF filters, transmission lines, amplifiers, and mixers, either directly or by their physical properties. Network parameters can be generated from within MATLAB or read in from external data. When data describing the response of the backplane is imported into RF Toolbox, it generates a rational function model that can be exported as a test environment either into Simulink or directly into a Verilog-A-compatible circuit simulator from an electronic design automation (EDA) vendor. RF Toolbox also provides Smith charts and rectangular and polar plots for visualizing data.

"RF Toolbox is based on the proven MATLAB environment and is flexible enough to fit into any company's signal integrity workflow," said Colin Warwick, technical marketing manager at The MathWorks. "Engineers can execute RF Toolbox functions from the MATLAB command line, the RF Toolbox GUI, or from their own MATLAB scripts and functions."

SOURCE: The MathWorks, Inc.