Trend to RF/Analog/Digital mixed technology boards

Trend to RF/Analog/Digital mixed technology boards

Last spring, Mentor and Agilent announced that they had integrated their PCB and RF respective design solutions.  Last fall, Applied Wave Research (AWR) announced a similar capability with Mentor.  These solutions address the design of boards that contain a mix of RF, analog and digital circuitry, and, enable designers from these disciplines to collaborate on the same design at the same time.  Users are experiencing up to a 50% reduction in design cycle times on complex boards and are able to increase the number of RF simulations performed thus improving the quality and performance of their systems.  Has the industry changed that much to demand this level of integration or were the vendors just slow on the switch to respond to their customers’ needs?

I think both!  The electronics industry has changed over the past few years to the point where every segment now embeds RF in many of their product lines.   We immediately think of the wireless communications industry where RF has been present for years.  But now we look at other industries like automotive where RF was never present and see an explosion in applications.  Mentor has suppliers designing collision avoidance, autopilots, telematics systems, toll collection, and hands-off communications.  The RFID applications are exploding.  Soon you will be able to gather your groceries and wheel the card out the door where each item in you cart will be sensed and automatically charged to your credit card.  RF is everywhere and the design of these system level boards commonplace in most industries.

Are we late to supply the needed capabilities to the design systems?  A little.  I think the industry came on quickly and the effort to embed RF design into Expedition and Board Station was significant.  And then, to work with Agilent and AWR for the high level of integration took time as well.   Better late than never.   We will just have to do better planning for the next emerging technology.

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