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Altum RF Gets Its Prototype Right the First Time, Shortens Design Process by 30%

Case Studies

Altum RF, founded in 2018 by RF and microwave industry veterans, saw a gap in the market for high-performance microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits using the latest semiconductor technology. So the company, with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands, and offices in the US and Australia, established an expert R&D team and a global supply chain under an ISO 9001 quality framework.

 

It focused on monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) products at frequencies up to 40 GHz, with plans to extend that to 125 GHz.

 

The project focused on achieving a high-power, single-MMIC amplifier for microwave applications in the 1 to 20 GHz range. It aimed to bridge the gap between existing gallium arsenide amplifiers and legacy traveling wave tube solutions.

 

The company wanted to achieve output power of 10 W while maximizing the efficiency and bandwidth in an SMT packaged MMIC product. That would make it a compelling, unique offering to serve a variety of applications: test and measurement, aerospace and defense, and telecommunications. On top of this already challenging project, minimizing design iterations and getting to market quickly were crucial for Altum RF’s success as a new company.

 

Organization:

• Altum RF www.altumrf.com

 

Challenges:

• conducting in-house nonlinear modeling using a new foundry GaN HEMT process

• meeting all electrical specifications, including the effects of wire bonding, an unfamiliar package, and printed circuit boards

 

Solutions:

• PathWave Advanced Design System (ADS)

• PathWave EM Design

• integrated Momentum and FEM EM solvers

 

Results:

• first-time-right prototype

• 30% savings on project time

 

Challenges: New Technology, New Project, New Design Tool

 

The technology Altum RF chose was a second-generation 0.25 µm gallium nitride (GaN) HEMT process. This choice posed yet another challenge. Nonlinear transistor models were not available at the start of the design project as the process was in the prerelease phase. Only a limited selection of test devices were available for characterization and fitting of the MQFET model used in the design.

 

In summary, Altum RF embarked on an unrivaled project with a combination of challenging specifications on power, gain, and bandwidth. It had to include the effects of bonding and packaging the device to create a turnkey solution for its customers. The company used a new technology with an incomplete process design kit missing nonlinear models. And it had to achieve all its goals within a strict timeline.

 

Solution: Choosing the Right Tool for Modeling, Design,  and Layout

 

After evaluating several design tool options, Altum RF chose Keysight’s PathWave Advanced Design System (ADS). The ADS ecosystem provides an efficient design flow with all required features in one tool. In particular, the results of both the 3D planar and full 3D electromagnetic (EM) solvers scale well to large, complex structures with a high number of ports and provide fast and accurate results compared to measurements.

 

“The way in which ADS handles large multidimensional arrays of data with efficient matrix operations, we found that to be quite superior and accelerated the model-fitting process significantly,” said Tony Fattorini, vice president of engineering at Altum RF. “The parameter extraction and model fitting has been more efficient than what we are used to and saved us several weeks.”

 

A second benefit came from the use of the ADS layout tool. All designs at Altum RF depend heavily on EM simulations. Besides the EM effects on the die itself at these frequencies, designers have to account for the inductance of the wire bonds and parasitic effects of the air cavity ceramic package. The tool easily transformed the mechanical drawings of the multilayered package into a three-dimensional model. The tight integration of the layout tool with EM simulators Momentum and finite element method (FEM) solvers made the process fast and efficient without the need to manually simplify the geometry or preprocess the layout. That efficiency sped up the analysis

 

The Design Rule Checker (DRC) provided a third advantage. “Where previous experience with this process was more clunky and time-consuming, ADS now allows us to submit layout files to the foundry’s web-based DRC tool and import the result at the push of a button within ADS,” Fattorini said. Not needing “another tool for verification or cumbersome file import and export has been a big time-saver.”

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