μWaveRiders: Thermal Analysis for RF Power Applications

22 Sep 2022 • 3 minute read

The Team RF "μWaveRiders" blog series is a showcase for Cadence AWR RF products. Monthly topics will vary between Cadence AWR Design Environment release highlights, feature videos and spotlights, and software tips, tricks, and customization. Subscribe to receive email notifications about our latest μWaveRiders blog posts.

Integration of the Cadence Celsius Thermal Solver in the AWR Design Environment Platform

As RF systems become more densely populated with heat dissipated electronics, the operating temperatures of those devices impact reliability (device lifetime) and performance. Thermal analysis with the Celsius Thermal Solver integrated within the AWR Microwave Office circuit simulator gives designers an understanding of device operating temperatures related to power dissipation. That temperature information can be introduced into an electrothermal model to predict the impact on RF performance. This in-design thermal analysis workflow gives RF engineers the critical operating temperature to improve performance and determine optimum thermal margins and heatsinking strategies, while shortening product development cycles and reducing the number of design iterations.

Thermal temperature distribution

Thermal analysis is run from within the AWR Design Environment platform using the Celsius Thermal Solver. Celsius EM structures are created by either drawing the geometry in the EM editor, or by using EM extraction. After simulating, the structure's 3D field plots of the thermal temperature distribution are viewable in the Celsius original editor. The simulation data sets automatically returned to the AWR Design Environment platform contain temperature, mesh, original input geometry, translated geometry, and simulation logs from the Celsius Thermal Solver.

Viewing geometry in the Native Editor is supported to allow validating, debugging, and post-processing in the Celsius 3D layout editor.

* Download the "Microwave Office + Celsius Thermal Simulation" Rapid Adoption Kits (RAKs) available from Cadence Online Support for additional information.

* Watch the recording of the CadenceTECHTALK "Integrated Thermal Analysis for RF MMIC and PCB Power Applications" to learn how the Celsius Thermal Solver uses design data such as layout geometries, material properties, and dissipated power simulation results from Microwave Office software to provide designers with thermal heat map visualization and operating temperature information.

Related Resources

White Paper

In-Design Thermal Analysis for MMIC and RF PCB Power Applications (requires a Cadence login)

Videos

Datasheets

Celsius Thermal Solver

Blogs

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