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There we saw how
graphical system design was used to design
prototype and deploy key embedded technologies
for smart grid and renewables.
Now I want to move up to something with a little higher frequency.
As you may know,
NI has been heavily investing in our RF measurement platform
for the last number of years.
In addition to our own internal developments,
we recently announced two strategic acquisitions that significantly
add to our capability in this space.
Phase Matrix has capability in products up to 50 GHz
and beyond and we’ll be working with Phase Matrix to integrate
those into National Instruments platform
to continue to grow our frequency coverage.
AWR is a technology leader in high frequency design or EDA.
As Dr. T mentioned in the RF space,
integrating real world measurements is particularly important
in design to accurately represent the real world
and improve the accuracy of the design process.
So to tell us more about that
I’d like to bring two of our newest employees from AWR,
Vice President of Marketing, Sherry Hess and
Solutions Architect, Josh Moore.
Welcome Josh. Welcome Sherry.
Welcome to NI.
Thank you.
Tell us a little about AWR and your products.
Sure Eric.
AWR is the innovation leader in High-Frequency Electronic Design Automation
software.
Our primary products are Microwave Office
for RF and microwave circuit design and Visual system simulator
or (VSS) for communication systems design.
With our software,
engineers design RF for wireless devices like
Smartphones, base stations and satellite communication systems.
So probably a few of us are familir with kind of schematic tools
but what makes RF a little bit different?
That's a good question.
So designing a circuit to operate at higher frequencies
typically above 1 GHz introduces some unique challenges that
aren’t necessarily present at DC. For instance,
if you have two traces that are coupled
close to one another in the final design,
the signal from one can couple to the other
and this coupling can then degrade the circuit’s performance.
For this reason,
engineers rely on our software
to include all the physical effects of the layout
whether through models, EM or measurements.
So Josh, can you show us how LabVIEW can help with that?
Absolutely. LabVIEW is the perfect tool to help integrate design and test,
because of its signal processing and instrument control capabilities.
In VSS, we’re prototyping ways to connect the system diagram
to LabVIEW could through the “LabVIEW VI Integration Block.”
If you take a closer look at the demo setup,
you can see that we’re using the NI LabVIEW RF toolkit
to generate a LTE baseband signal.
This waveform gets passed into the simulation model
of an Infineon RF power amplifier. At the output of the amplifier,
we connected a second LabVIEW block
which demodulates and analyzes the signal.
Can you drill down into the amp and tell people
a bit more about component?
Sure.
This particular part is an Infineon cellular base station amplifier
designed to output up to 250 Watts of RF power.
If we take a closer look at the model in VSS,
we can actually see that this entire model was designed
using AWR’s microwave office.
Here we see the circuit schematic, layout,
and even a 3D model of the power amplifier.
Okay so you’re basically using LabVIEW to generate
a LTE stimulus signal into this simulated component
and then also using LabVIEW to measure the response?
That’s exactly it, when the simulation runs,
we can see the results
in the LabVIEW analysis block.
Here, we can see both the distorted constellation and spectral re-growth,
both characteristics of an amplifier operating
near it's compression point.
Okay that's cool but we know all the designers really want to see
how their simulated results compare to the actual hardware.
So right here on stage we have the Infineon PA.
Josh, how about adding some real hardware in the loop
using LabVIEW so we can take a look at
how well simulation and measurements compare.
Okay.
This third LabVIEW integration block on the diagram
has been configured to talk to the vector signal generator, verctor signal analyzer and RF
power amplifier in front of us.
Now when the simulation runs, we can actually
compare the simulated results
and measurement results side by side. As expected,
the simulated results are nearly identical
to the actual measurement of the device in front of us.
That’s awesome.
That’s kind of like a dream of a RF designer to get it all in one place.
Now, I should give one caviet that this is a prototype
and a little of a work and progress.
So, this will be capability we intend to release in
future versions of the AWR tools. That’s very cool though.
Thank you both very much.