RF Systems Design Services

RF Systems Design Services

Define Requirements

  • Review Standard
  • Derive RF Requirements
  • Include performance margin

Architecture Trade-Off

  • Select Optimum Architecture
  • Block Level Partition
  • Block specifications

Optimization

  • Block Level Feasibility
  • Optimize Performance and Yield
  • Verify System performance


Our Systems Oriented Methodology combined with an extensive library of Silicon Proven IP, supports the design of high performance Transmit, Receive and Synthesizer subsystems that can be realized with high yield.

IC Design: Industry Standard Tool SetReceiver Analysis

Full chain analysis over dynamic range, operating frequency, voltage, temperature and process variation. Assess the impact of thermal noise, phase noise, distortion, in-band and out-of-band blockers, reciprocal mixing, desensitization, adjacent channel leakage, intermodulation and second order nonlinearities from DC offsets.


IC Design: Industry Standard Tool SetTransmitter Analysis

Full chain analysis over dynamic range, operating frequency, voltage, temperature and process variation. Output power, linearity, EVM, power control range and spectral content are simulated. Assess the impact of spectral regrowth, noise power, I-Q mismatch, phase noise, variation over frequency, group delay, LO Leakage, harmonics, intermodulation products, sideband suppression, reference spurs and switching transients.

Synthesizer AnalysisSynthesizer Analysis

Full closed loop analysis over frequency, voltage, temperature and process variation. Phase noise, pushing, pulling, tuning range, spur level and settling time are analyzed. Assess the impact of Kvco, resonator Q, charge pump mismatch and spurs. Multicore VCO design, autocalibration and on-chip versus off-chip resonator approaches are analyzed. The benefits of FRAC-N sigma delta versus integer design is determined.

Design ToolsDesign Tools

ADS simulations of multi-tone signals, filtering, noise, modulated carriers, BER/PER, EVM provide a high level of system validation. Matlab & Simulink are used for synthesizer analysis in the time domain and frequency domain. RF Integration’s proprietary System Accelerator (SAX) provide a full chain analysis of Rx and Tx chains.

SAX - RF Integration’s System Accelerator toolSAX - RF Integration’s System Accelerator Tool

SAX is a sophisticated proprietary RF system analysis tool that enables instantaneous analysis of a complete Rx and Tx chain over its full dynamic range. This is a crucial step in developing an IC that has realizable, system compliant, building blocks with good performance margin and high yield.

SAX supports:

  • Initial partition of IC building block specifications,
  • Allocation of the performance requirements across the chain,
  • Analysis over the entire dynamic range,
  • System level optimization of performance versus yield and cost,
  • Verification of system compliance through the entire design cycle,
  • Verification over voltage, temperature & process.

SAX is integrated into the RF Integration design flow enabling a high confidence of system compliance from the initial concept phase to production release.