Computer-aided high-frequency modeling and design

高频电子行业（包括射频/微波和无线行业）的竞争力可以为我们的经济做出重大贡献。例如，2003年，加拿大的无线行业创造了82亿美元的收入，今天有25 000多名加拿大人在该行业工作。计算机辅助设计（CAD）竞技场的研究为高频电路的设计和优化提供了关键工具，这些高频电路在通信、消费电子和卫星链路中得到应用。是什么让这些电路的CAD具有挑战性？以千兆赫频率工作的电子电路模拟全波电磁或EM行为。如果在CAD阶段不考虑高频效应（例如电磁耦合），可能会导致设计修订和上市周期延长，从而造成重大经济影响。建议的研究是面向增强传统的CAD工具和低频面向模型库。教人工神经网络（ANN）学习EM行为，然后将EM-ANN模型优雅地集成到CAD工具库中将仍然是一个活跃的线程。具体来说，这项建议的重点是开发具有成本效益的高频建模工具，使用自适应采样，探索快速互连优化工具，制定灵活的CAD模型，代表晶圆上无源器件之间的EM耦合，并调查用于卫星滤波器设计的CAD工具。最直接的结果将是为工业中的电路设计师和CAD工具用户发明新颖的计算机辅助建模、设计和优化工具。这项工作有可能提高设计效率，缩短设计周期和上市时间，提高产品质量，降低消费者成本。通过这项研究培训的人员将构成我们行业的高技能劳动力。这些因素可能会导致保持加拿大高频电子行业在全球市场上的竞争力。

The competitiveness of the high-frequency electronics industry including RF/microwave and wireless sectors can significantly contribute to our economy. For instance, Canada's wireless industry generated $8.2 billion in revenues in 2003, and today more than 25,000 Canadians work for the industry. Research in computer aided design (CAD) arena leads to key vehicles for design and optimization of high-frequency circuits, which find applications in communications, consumer electronics and satellite links. What makes CAD of these circuits challenging? Electronic circuits operating at Gigahertz frequencies emulate full-wave electromagnetic or EM behaviours. High-frequency effects, e.g. EM coupling, if not considered during the CAD phase, could lead to prolonged design-revision and time-to-market cycles thereby causing substantial economic fallouts. The proposed research is geared towards enhancing traditional CAD tools and their low-frequency oriented model libraries. Teaching artificial neural networks (ANN) to learn the EM behaviours, followed by elegant integration of EM-ANN models into the CAD-tool libraries will remain an active thread. Specifically, this proposal focuses on development of cost-effective high-frequency modeling tools using adaptive sampling, exploration of rapid interconnect optimization tools, formulation of flexible CAD models representing EM coupling between on-wafer passives, and investigation of CAD tools for design of filters used in satellites. The most direct outcome will be invention of novel computer aided modeling, design and optimization tools for circuit designers and CAD-tool users in industry. This work has a potential to increase design efficiency, shorten design cycles and time-to-market, enhance product quality, and decrease consumer costs. Personnel trained by this research will constitute highly skilled workforce for our industry. These factors could lead to maintaining the competitiveness of the Canadian high-frequency electronics industry in the global market.