AWR Helps Alcatel-Lucent Eliminates File Translation Bottleneck
Between (PCB) and High-Frequency Design
Tools
Gives Thumbs Up to AWR's Co-Design Tools After Rigorous Evaluation
at
Company's Platform Hardware Center
 Sherry
Hess
President of Marketing
AWR Corp.
(310) 726-3000
hess@awrcorp.com
The Design Challenge
The circuits created by the PHC must conform to the electrical and physical requirements
for the systems of which they will be a part. Because these systems tend to evolve as they are developed, a great
deal of flexibility is required, which has been hampered for many years because the PHC was forced to maintain two
separate component libraries. When beginning an RF or microwave design, the footprint had to be synchronized and
verified with both the Mentor Graphics printed circuit board (PCB) software tools and AWR's high-frequency design
software.
After the layout was complete, data was transferred via DXF (data exchange format) from AWR's
Microwave Office software to Mentor Graphics Expedition. However, there was no way to perform bidirectional data
transfer in order to import the microwave schematic or symbols to Mentor's DXDesigner, or to export circuit
modifications performed in Expedition back to the Microwave Office platform. The increasing complexity of the
team's design coupled with the sheer volume of its workload made this productivity roadblock unacceptable.
What design problem did AWR's software help you to solve?
AWR Connected™ for Mentor Graphics Expedition, for which the PHC was a beta site, has helped the design team
overcome its previous productivity roadblocks and has, in just a few months, yielded significant reductions in
design time. With AWR Connected for Mentor Graphics Expedition, there is no library duplication, since the
dynamically linked software utility automatically creates a complete AWR library file (symbols, part numbers,
substrate definitions, footprints, padstacks, and layer process) directly from the Mentor tools and automatically
updates the library file whenever there is a Mentor-invoked change. The software enables real-time, seamless
bidirectional transfer of schematic and layout between the two tools, so that the schematic and layout can be sent
from the Microwave Office environment to Mentor tools, modified, and sent back to Microwave Office.
In addition, Microwave Office circuit simulation and analysis can be driven from Mentor, and a Mentor
PCB can be linked to many Microwave Office projects. This can be performed locally, throughout the PHC, or even
throughout Alcatel-Lucent via the Internet. Perhaps fundamentally most important for the PHC design teams is
the assurance that they will always have the correct footprints and library when performing an RF simulation. Now
that AWR Connected for Mentor Graphics Expedition has been verified through rigorous testing, the PHC will further
leverage its ability to link the formerly separate and redundant high-frequency simulation and PCB domains.
The full article is available at
http://web.awrcorp.com/Usa/Success-Stories/Microwave-Office/Alcatel-Lucent/.
-----------------
Readers can get more detailed information by visiting
www.awrcorp.com/analyst, by calling AWR at (310)
726-3000, by e-mail at
info@awrcorp.com, or by contacting their local AWR representative.
About AWR
AWR is the innovation leader in high-frequency EDA software that
dramatically reduces development time and cost for products employed in wireless, high-speed wired broadband,
aerospace and defense, and electro-optical applications. The company's core technology is unique among
high-frequency EDA platforms in that it is inherently open and flexible. AWR continually strengthens its product
portfolio with innovative new technologies that enable faster, more streamlined product development, the most
recent of which are the ACE™, RFA™, and AXIEM™ tools. The privately-held company has thousands of active users and
is headquartered at 1960 East Grand Avenue, Suite 430, El Segundo, Calif. 90245. For more information about AWR
and its products, please visit
www.awrcorp.com.
(c) 2009 AWR Corporation. All rights reserved. AWR, the AWR logo, and Microwave Office are registered
trademarks of AWR Corporation.
Analyst, AWR Design Environment, ACE, AXIEM, RFA, and Visual System Simulator are trademarks of AWR
Corporation. All others may be trademarks of their respective holders.
Posted 2/15/2009
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