ADS Tutorial: A Beginners Tutorial: Modes of Operation

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ADS Tutorial: A Beginners Tutorial

ADS is a sophisticated circuit simulator and can take a significant amount of time to learn all the complex features. For the H6CTCE/H64RFL(P) courses you do not need to know about these features. This simple tutorial is designed to help you learn what you need to know to do the course work. Along the way, the examples used in this tutorial will reinforce the information given in the lectures. ADS can run on a variety of operating systems. The current version runs on a UNIX machine and windows XP. The diagrams in this tutorial come from my PC. When you run ADS on the school SUN the windows will be very similar, however the colours may be different.

Modes of operation. Circuit Simulation


In its simplest form ADS has the same functionality has other SPICE programs like PSPICE. There is a graphical user interface to draw the circuit diagram (Schematic entry). Like many commercial SPICE programs, the software comes with significant number of predefined libraries. Since the focus of ADS is RF and microwave design, the majority of the devices in the library are rf and microwave devices. There are, however, a few low frequency FETs and BJTs. If you want to simulate power electronic circuits you should use a more appropriate package. The are several different simulations that ADS can perform. Some of these can be found in traditional SPICE simulators. The more complex simulation modes are also available in other design software like Microwave Office. The simulation modes you are likely to use in your project are given below. DC Analysis: The first step in any circuit simulation is the determination of the bias point. This simulation performs this. It takes into account the non-linear behaviour of the transistors and other circuit elements. AC Analysis: This analysis performs essentially a small signal analysis of the circuit. A DC analysis is performed to determined the quiescent point. At this bias point the transistors and other non-linear circuit elements are linearised. In other words the transistors are replaced by their equivalent circuits which are made from resistors, capacitors , inductors and voltage and current sources. This type of analysis is only appropriate for small signals. S-Parameter Analysis: This is essentially the microwave equivalent of ACanalysis and the same comments apply. This analysis will be frequently used in the project and microwave circuit design. Transient Analysis: AC and S-parameter analysis linearise the circuit and operate in the frequency domain. Transient analysis predicts the performance of the circuit in the time domain. It therefore includes all the non-linear properties of the components. Be warned this simulation can take significant amount of time and generate large amounts of data. Harmonic Balance (HB): When designing a circuit with non linear elements, usually we are only interested in the interaction of a couple of frequencies. This analysis takes into account the non-linear elements of the circuit and

restricts the analysis to several important frequencies. This is usually faster than doing a complete transient analysis and then extracting the required information from the temporal signal by Fourier transform techniques. This is ideal for obtaining an estimate for the IMD3 products by simulating two tone test measurements. There are other simulation modes which are available in ADS. These are Large Signal S-Parameteres (LSSS), Circuit Envelope, Gain Compression (XDB), and Budget Analysis. Although not strictly a simulation mode, there is also an optimisation tool that allows you to vary a parameter.

System Simulation.
ADS also allows simulation of circuits and systems using digital signal processing. This circuit simulation is based on the data flow controller (Ptolemy) developed by University of California, Berkeley. This analysis tool is important because in modern communication systems the modulation scheme is digital and the received analogue signal requires significant amount of processing to extract the digital data. ( For example in the OFDM used in terrestrial digital television requires a FFT). ADS allows you to simulate part of your circuit using conventional circuit simulation tools and the rest of the system using the data flow controller. For the continual assessment used in H6CTCE/H64RFL(P) you will not need to use this simulation mode.

Starting ADS2004A
The starting instructions for Unix and WinXp are slightly different. Both require environmental variables to be set and these are described in the installation manuals. On both the unix systems and the PC systems this has been already done and so you should be able to start ADS. On a Unix/Linux machine, you should type setup ads in a terminal window and on a PC running windows XP you should find the appropriate place in the start menu. The computers on the 4th floor use windows 98 operating system and ADS2004A cannot run on this operating system and so you will need to connect to one of the Universities Suns1 using exceed and start ads using the unix commands given above. Figure 1 Quick Start Window Information services have produced a guide to accessing the unix systems and this explains how to use exceed.

1 There are 6 sun blade PCs in the CAD lab (Pope A16)

Figure 2Main ADS window. ( Note the .files displayed in the window are system files and should not be deleted)

When ADS starts up several windows and splash windows appear. Only two windows are important: the quick start dialog box (see figure 1) and the main ADS window (Figure 2). The other windows are usually for passing information to the user. ( An additional window may appear if this is the first time ADS has been used on your system and this gives you the option of the type of simulation you want. Since the default is for circuit simulation you can just press OK). From the quick start window you can start open a new project, open an existing project and open an Agilent supplied example file. Do not confuse these files with the ones I have supplied. The quick start menu is the quickest way to get started. The main window performs the same functionality but has significantly more features most of which are only useful for the advanced user.

Projects
A piece of work , which consists of schematics (networks), and results (data) is organised into projects. Each project is self contained piece of work. Physically a project is a directory on your computers file system which contains several other directories. Your schematics are stored in a directory called networks. Figure 3 Directory structure of a Each schematic is stored in a separate file with the project. extension dsn. The results from your simulations are stored in the directory data with the extension ds. The other directories and files store information required for ADS to correctly work and should not be deleted or edited. By default ADS adds _PRJ to the end of the project name you give it. ( This behaviour can be changed.)

Unarchiving projects
On the web site there are several example projects. That I have written to aid

your learning of ADS and the material on the course. These have been archived using ADS. These files are not compatible with the standard zip utilities found on PCs. To unarchive these files select the unarchive option on the file menu of the main ADS window. This will generate the dialog box below.

Archiving Projects
For distribution of projects to others as well as general storage projects can be archived within ADS. Thehe archive project dialog box below can be accessed from the file menu of the root ADS window.

First Circuit Simulation.


In this part of the tutorial we will take you through several stages of a simple DC simulation. The project file can be found in Lecture3.zap. For a BJT to obtain the standard VCE-IC characteristics. 1. Open a project file by selecting file->new project which opens a dialog box to select the project name. The dialog box also allows you to select the default length unit. My personal choice is always a micron. In the figure I have used the filename lecture3 and so the project directory will be called Lecture3_PRJ. On pressing OK several other windows open. You get a empty unnamed schematic sheet and a schematic wizard. My advice is to ignore the wizard for the time being.

2. On the left of the window are a set of components. These components can be placed on the schematic by drag and drop. The actual type of components that are available can be changed by selecting the type in the drop down menu above. In the screen shot shown we have the lumped Components. On the top of the schematic we have a variety of quick access buttons. If you move you mouse over the boxes, the action pops up in a window. 3. The first step is to insert BFT component. We shall use a component already in the library rather than setting up our own. To access the library of RF devices we need to use the menu item insert->Component->Component library. This opens another window, which gives you access to all components including those that are available from the drag and drop palette. The devices we want come under the microwave transistor section so you will need to scroll down the right hand sub-window and then select the BJT transistors. This will then fill the left hand window with the available transistors. It is very difficult to pick out the component you want so I advise the use of the search facility which can be accessed by clicking on the magnifying glass and entering the transistor number ( BFP450)

4. You can now place the component onto the schematic. You will also need to add from the drop and drag palette, an ideal DC current source and a voltage source for the collector-emitter voltage. These can be found under Sources Frequency Domain. You will need to place at least one earth on the schematic. This can be accessed from the main toolbar. To wire up the components you can either click on the toolbar button or press <control> W. Before proceeding to wireup the circuit you need one more additional component. To measure IC you will need a current probe. This can be found under Probe Components .

5. We now need to tell the simulator what our variables are. In this case the variables are IB and VCE. To do this we include the variable component which can be found under data items. To add IB and VCE to the component we need to double click on the component which opens the variables and Equations

dialog box. The variable value set in this dialog box is the default value. 6. The next stage is to set the current source to IB and the voltage source VCE. If you double click on the component you can edit the values of the component. This dialog box allows you to set which values are shown on the schematic change the Instance Name. For those values shown on the schematic can be directly edited. 7. The next step is tell the simulator what simulation you want to perform. This is achieved by placing on the schematic simulation components. If more than one component is placed on a schematic all simulations are performed. In this case we want to do a simple DC simulation. So we place the DC simulation component on the schematic. The simulation component icon contains a cog. If you give this component no data then it will perform a DC analysis using the default values. However, we want to use this component to ramp one of our variables. To setup this ramp we double click on the component. This opens a dialog box with several tabs. We need to select the Sweep tab which is the default tab. We need to add the parameter to sweep which is VCE and the start, stop and step size. By default these component options are not placed on the schematic. To enable us to edit them on the schematic we need to display them. This can be achieved under the Display tab. If we were to

simulate the circuit after editing this component the simulation would run using the default value of IB. What we really want to happen after the DC simulation is for the simulation to be repeated with a different value of IB. 8. There is a special general component called parameter sweep that will allow us to do this. It also works for any other simulation type and can be found on all simulation drag and drop palettes. To change the control parameters of the parameter sweep we need to double click on the component once it has been placed on the schematic. This dialog box allows the parameter to be sweep to be set as well as the range. In this case the parameter is IB and we want to start from say 0.1mA to 1mA with a step size of 0.1mA. The final setting of this component is the Simulations to be called for each value of IB. This can be accessed under the simulations tab. and we use the instance name (DC1). 9. Like many window applications the schematic can be saved by accessing the file menu. This will also rename the sheet from untitled to whatever you name it. In this example I have called it VCEIB. Unless changed the default action after simulating is for the simulation data to be saved in a dataset called VCEIB and a data window called VCEIB to be opened. If you have not saved a previously used data window this will be empty. The data window allows you to display the data in a variety of ways including smith charts. The type of graph can be selected from the lefthand toolbar. These include polar, Smith charts, tables as well as standard XY plots. In this case we want only a simple XY plot which is top right. This can be placed on the data display window by drag and drop. This will automatically open up a dialog box allowing us to

change the settings of the plot include the individual traces. To add a trace we select the parameter and then click on add. ADS takes care of the X-axis automatically.

Layout
ADS2004A also allows the layout of PCBs and microelectronic circuits. For components in the standard libraries there is often a layout associated with that component. This is very valuable when you come to design PCBs. As part of this tool there is the facility to perform electromagnetic simulations to obtain detailed S-parameter measurements of passive elements like spiral inductors, capacitors, transmission lines and couplers. This tool is called momentum. There are two modes. RF mode is the quickest but less accurate. It is only valid for structures whose size is electrically small ( size to smaller than the wavelength). Microwave mode is more accurate but takes longer to simulate.

3db coupler

To demonstrate the automatic placement of components and the momentum simulator, I will design a 3db branch line coupler on 100um thick alumina. This process will start from the schematic. The design cycle using ADS is to use the schematic to initially optimise your design followed by the layout and full E-M modelling using moment. Schematic entry allows us to define a variety of microstrip structures. These can be placed on the schematic by drag and dropping from the TLINES MICROSTRIP palette. The first and most important component is MSUB. This defines the substrate. In our case the substrate has a thickness (H) of 100um and relative dielectric constant of 9.8 with a loss tangent of 2e-4. This component also allows us to set the thickness (T) and conductivity of the metal. This allows the resistance of the metal to be taken into account. The second important component is the microstrip component itself. This defines the length and width

of the microstrip transmission line. To get the relevant sizes we need to run either linecalc if it has been installed on the version of ADS you are using or another microstrip calculator. I recommend txline from applied wave research. For 50 ohms we need a width of approximately 97um. Since there are 6 lines in my design with this characteristic impedance, I have defined a variable W50 which I have set to 97um and use W50 has the width parameter for the transmission lines. This has the benefit of only needing to change 1 value if I want to try and optimise the design. For a quarter wavelength the transmission lines needs to be approximately 2912um. For 35Ohms the width needs to be 188 and the quarter wavelength is 2818. Again I use variables rather than set the values of the lines themselves. Simulation of this shows approximate performance and we can optimise by changing the lengths and widths slightly.

Creating Hierarchical Schematics


For complex microstrip elements it is worth simulating the network using momentum. To facilitate this the use of hierarchical schematics is benefical. To create an hierarchical schematic from a current schematic select the wires and components you want in the lower schematic and then select the menu Edit>component->create hierarchy. Ads will then ask for the design name for the new subsheet. The result of this is that the circuit you selected is now in a separate file and on the current schematic it has been replaced by an box with connections to it. To descend into the lower schematic select the box and then either right click and then choose the appropriate option (Push into Hierarchy) or the downward arrow button on the toolbar. You can edit the bitmap used to represent the circuit from the menu View-> create/edit schematic symbol. Creating Layouts Having descended into my design for the coupler I am now ready to create the layout. I have included all the necessary routes has transmission lines so the layout should be automatic and can be achieved by selecting layout-> generate/update layout. This also opens another couple of dialog boxes. The first defines the colours of the layers and is a dialog box asking questions about the layout process. Do not change any of these items until you need to. ( For the undergraduate projects this should be unnecessary.) The layout window should automatically appear. If it does not then can can open the layout window for your schematic by selecting window->layout.

The design had 4 arrows on it. These represent the ports of our design. It is at these ports we need to find the S-parameters by using momentum.
Defining ports

Momentum is a powerful E-m simulation tool and so there are a variety of different ports. We want to use the simplest which is also the default. We need to edit each port using the port editor. The port editor dialog box is activated by momentum->port editor. When the dialog box is open we want to select each port in turn and then press the apply button on the dialog box. A white line will also appear on the schematic this repesents the reference planes.
Substrate defintion

The first step is to load the substrate model. This is achieved by either using the substrate parameters defines in the MSUB component (recommended) or by defined it again. The first is accomplished by selecting momentum->substrates>update from schematic. The other requires you to set information about the substrate in an additional dialog box which can be activiated by momentum>substrate->create/modify.
Mesh setup

Before the simulation can proceed we need to define the mesh by opening the mesh setup dialog box. ( Momemtum->mesh->setup). the important parameter is to set the mesh frequency to the highest frequency you want to analyse the circuit for. In our case 12 GHz will be good ( Higher the frequency the finer the mesh will be and longer the simulation.)
Simulation

Momentum->simulation->s-parameters opens the simulaton dialog box. There are several modes of operation. In the initial stages I would recommend using the adaptive sweep type . This only requires a start and stop frequency. Internal points are added adaptively. The software does make assumptions about shape and so in the final simulation I would do a linear step to ensure the adaptive

sweep was giving the correct results. After enter the start and stop frequencies you do need to click the update button are else the changes are not recognised. You now free to perform the simulation. This simulation takes longer than the schematic simulation. A data display window automatically opens but only shows S11. You will need to add S12 , S13 and S14.

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