AWR®

Success
Story

University of Colorado Students Learned

Microwave Office Software with Ease

AWR’s Tools and TriQuint’s Foundry Process Enables Students to Design

and Fabricate Novel MMIC Circuits That Performed as Expected
Application:
CUSTOMER BACKGROUND MMICs

Most graduate level engineering students with a consummate interest in AWR Software:
“fields and waves” have designed and possibly even fabricated numerous hybrid Microwave Office®
microwave circuits. Few engineering schools, however, provide graduate
students with the opportunity to not only design microwave monolithic integrated
circuits (MMICs), but to transfer their designs to a foundry, obtain working
devices, and evaluate their actual performance against simulated results.

Thanks to an innovative program begun in 2008 between the University

of Colorado, AWR, and TriQuint Semiconductor, this real world experience
has become a reality for students in the computer-aided, active microwave
circuit design course taught by Prof. Zoya Popovic. Dr. Popovic, the Hudson
Moore Jr. chaired professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and
Energy Engineering, is an IEEE Fellow and respected authority on applied
electromagnetic (EM) and microwave engineering. Prof. Popovic has received
numerous prestigious awards, has written hundreds of technical papers, and is
the co-author of the junior-level textbook “Introductory Electromagnetics.”

THE DESIGN CHALLENGE

Students in Dr. Popovic’s class were tasked with choosing a monolithic “I found the ease with
microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) that supported their respective thesis which the students
research projects. These projects are funded by an impressive list of
learned the software
government agencies and private industries ranging from the National Science
rather remarkable.
Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and
They attended a
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), to the Office of Naval
Research (ONR), Nuvotronics, BAE Systems, Sandia Laboratories, National single AWR training
Semiconductor, and the Coleman Institute. class and got great

All of the MMICs were designed using Microwave Office software, and their help from an AWR
manufacturability was verified using ICED, a no-cost plug-in feature in Microwave applications engineer
Office 2008. The students then used AWR’s process design kit (PDK) for along the way, but
TriQuint’s TQPED 0.5-µm E/D pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor otherwise they were
(pHEMT) process, which helped them quickly and easily transfer their designs to
on their own. And
fabrication. TriQuint provided the University of Colorado with a quarter of their
they did it.”
gallium arsenide (GaAs) wafer, and the devices were fabricated in roughly a one
Dr. Zoya Popovic
month turn-around timeframe. The students then characterized their fabricated
Professor
devices using a probe station, and in some cases packaged them for full testing. Hudson Moore Jr. Endowed Chair
University of Colorado
www.colorado.edu
 AWR
Success
Story

An additional challenge, similar to the tight product development

schedules in the business world, was that the entire project has to be
accomplished within the time constraints of one semester. For many of
the students, the first step was to learn how to use Microwave Office,
which turned out to be a pleasant surprise. “Frankly, I found the ease
with which the students learned the software rather remarkable,” said
Dr. Popovic. “They attended a single AWR training class and got great
help from an AWR applications engineer along the way, but otherwise
they were on their own. And they did it.”

SOME UNUSUAL CIRCUITS

Dr. Popovic, thinly disguising her pride in their efforts, describes some
of the circuits designed by her students as truly unconventional, and
frequently uses the word “novel” when referring to them. She further
stated that the engineers at TriQuint were impressed with the device
complexity, which in some cases they thought would push the limits of Class-E power amplifier Microwave Office layout.
the process, perhaps revealing some of its undiscovered capabilities. An
example of a project is a four-stage distributed amplifier that included a
set of RTL standard and had a flat frequency response to 20GHz (shown
on right). Other devices included a lumped-element broadband Wilkinson
divider already submitted for publication to the IEEE MTT Transactions,
a low-noise amplifier, a switched delay line, a switched-capacitor tuning
circuit, a high-efficiency harmonically-tuned switchedmode power amplifier
with lumped-element harmonic terminations, a broadband lumped-element
power amplifier, a Class-D 1.5-GHz, balanced amplifier, and a nonlinear
transmission line that uses pHEMT devices as varactor diodes.

WELL WORTH THE EFFORT

A course as comprehensive as Dr. Popovic’s obviously requires a
considerably greater amount of effort for both the instructor and the
students than most engineering courses, but the professor strongly feels
the end result was worth the extra work. “I’m very proud of the work
20 GHz four-stage distributed amplifier MMIC and
they’ve done,” she says. “The ability to actually fabricate and test the Microwave Office simulation results.
MMIC devices they create is incredibly helpful to my students. Some of
these circuits are truly unusual and to get results that agree so well with
the simulation is both a credit to the students, AWR’s Microwave Office
software, and the quality of TriQuint’s pHEMT process.”

With course requirements complete and final measurements being slowly www.triquint.com
conducted using the university’s test equipment, Dr. Popovic looks to the
next course, and a new increased crop of 23 graduate students. “We’re
definitely going to continue this course,” she says. “If there ever was a
‘win-win’ situation, this is it.”

AWR, 1960 East Grand Avenue, Suite 430, El Segundo, CA 90245, USA
Tel: +1 (310) 726-3000 Fax: +1 (310) 726-3005 www.awrcorp.com
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