circuitRF Application Notes
Worked investigations of questions that come up in real designs, with the measurements behind the answers.
The Reference Guide says what every control does. An application note answers a question that only shows up once you are using them together on a real board — usually a question of the form "the tool told me two things and I do not see how both can be true."
Each note is a complete investigation rather than a summary: the structure, what was measured, what the numbers turned out to mean, and what to do differently. Where a note quotes a number, that number came out of a run, and the note says which run.
Application notes
- AN-01 — Coupled Lines, EM Ports, terminations and de-embedding AN-01: how to EM-simulate coupled lines - kernel choice, where the ports go, and how two coupled feeds are calibrated together.
- AN-02 — Importing a Gerber file set, and turning it into a schematic AN-02: a Gerber file set imported, its stackup checked, and its copper read back as a schematic that simulates without an EM run.
- AN-03 — Extracting capacitance AN-03: when an electrostatic solve is the right way to get a capacitance, which metal is ground and which floats, the Maxwell matrix against the circuit one, and the answer in a schematic.
- AN-04 — A nonlinear FET model from a reference kit AN-04: a nonlinear FET model from another simulator's design kit - what to sample, at which plane, what each Model Composer step does with it, and how to check the model against the kit.
Every note is self-contained, so they can be read in any order and none of them is a prerequisite for another. They do assume the relevant Reference chapter — a note about EM ports will link to the MoM engine rather than re-explain de-embedding.