The interaction between design and test is a matter of great importance in high-speed RF product development. The quest for "Guaranteed by Design" increasingly runs into obstacles for various reasons: (1) Fabrication process is being developed almost in parallel with design, thus process parameters and their statistical properties, provided to the designers, are not fully guaranteed. (2) Physical understanding of devices and interconnects in sub-nanometer geometries and in high-speed operations is lacking, making it difficult to create accurate simulation models to assist designers. (3) Simulation tools and algorithms for high-speed RF circuits and subsystems are not as robust, especially when digital RF and analog RF circuits have to be simulated together to predict performance. (4) Product development cycle is contracting to meet market demands, thus some designs have to be prototyped in hardware, possibly with several turns, before they come close to meeting performance specifications.
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