Mimix Broadband develops state-of-the-art GaAs semiconductors for RF, microwave and millimeter-wave applications in the telecommunications, satellite communications, and defense markets. Mimix Broadband was designing a millimeter-wave converter that employed innovative passive circuits. If the design could be realized successfully, it would achieve exceptionally high performance without using larger conventional millimeter-wave wave structures that would result in a larger die size and greater cost. However, this required the entire structure to be solved in order to verify the design.
Using a variety of commercial electromagnetic (EM) solvers, Mimix Broadband was unable to simulate the entire monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC), which includes more than 100 ports and 100,000 unknowns. The company’s designers turned to AWR’s AXIEM software, which solved the entire structure on a desktop PC. Armed with a full-chip EM solution, Mimix Broadband had far greater understanding of the circuit’s physics as well.
The complete story detailing Mimix Broadband’s design challenge is available at www.awr.com.