Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

VLSI & RF

All the following pages are maintained by Imad Abbadi. Last update 9/3/06.

This page contains information about the software used within the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuit design and Radio Frequency (RF) design. This will include tutorials on how to use them and a debugging page that lists all the common problems and their solutions.

Cadence design environment

We use the tools developed by Cadence Design Systems in graduate and undergraduate research and teaching. To be more precise, we use them to design, and simulate circuits at the schematic view, draw circuit layout, perform post-layout simulations of the transient, frenquency and dc type, simulate hardware description language files and perform the elaboration, floorplanning, placement, and routing of a digital system.

Designs made in commercial design kits are ready to be sent for fabrication.

HP ADS

We use the HP Advanced Design Systems tools for designing and simulating RF circuits. ADS is  a software from Agilent Technologies, Inc. It is a very versatile and powerful CAD program for RF and Microwave design. Among other items, it can do much of wha tSpice can do as well as perform harmonic balance and microwave frequencybased design.

It has a large palette of microwave components and transistor devices and can accommodate VLSI devices. It has a good geometric-to-schematic linked capability so that PCB's and Chips can be fabricated with the database generated. Currently our license is limited for academic use only, i.e. it is not for funded research but can be used for graduate student theses and dissertations.

ADS is used in EE414/514 and other microwave coursework. Graduate student scan use it for computations directly benefiting their theses and dissertations. There is a possible link in Cadence to ADS. It can be an alternate computational tool to SpectreRF for RF design.

ISU thanks Agilent for providing the software license under the university discount licensing. All work done at ISU that uses ADS tools should be restricted to academic purposes only. If you are unsure about your case, please contact Dr. Weber.