White Paper: Upfront RF Planning Speeds System-Level Analysis

High-frequency technology didn't earn its reputation as black magic for no reason. Unlike low-frequency circuits, microwave circuits don't behave in a totally predictable way, so "tweaking" has been an accepted mainstay of the microwave design approach/flow. Fortunately, high-frequency design tools have dramatically improved so that tweaking of prototype circuits is much less common, and today's engineer has powerful tools that can make sense of the black magic. As this article will demonstrate, AWR's Visual System Simulator (VSS) design environment, a comprehensive software suite for design and optimization of communications systems, provides insight early in the design process about how a circuit, subsystem, or system will perform, enabling designers to make changes up front in component values and circuit configurations with far less effort.