Philadelphia, PA—National Instruments (NI, Austin, TX) and Ansoft Corp. announced June 11 that they're integrating Ansoft Designer high-frequency electronic-design software and NI's LabView 7 Express virtual instrumentation software to aid rapid prototyping and verification of radio frequency (RF) system designs.

By Control Engineering Staff

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Philadelphia, PA— National Instruments (NI, Austin, TX) and Ansoft Corp. signs.

This integration will reportedly allow design engineers to easily incorporate real-world measurements into their RF and wireless system design flow to accelerate the model development and system validation of complex RF and mixed-signal systems. A set of example programs for integrating LabView and Ansoft Designer is available ni.com/design .

'By working with NI, we can provide our customers with a more efficient method of validating wireless, wire-line and optical-communications application designs. We're extending traditional RF system design simulation by combining Ansoft Designer automated design environment with LabView's advanced measurement capabilities,' says Nicholas Csendes, Ansoft's president and CEO. 'This provides a solution that covers the complete design flow, from concept and system design to individual component and system testing.'

Engineers use Ansoft's circuit, system and electromagnetic modeling and advanced simulation products to create and simulate RF and microwave system designs. Now, with LabView's data exchange tools for interfacing with standard Touchstone RF data files, LabView and Ansoft Designer can easily share data. By using LabView, design engineers have access to a variety of measurement I/O from vector network analyzers to modular RF instruments, such as NI's PXI-5660 RF signal analyzer. This means they can generate real-world stimuli; take real-world measurements; and compare measured results with simulation data to identify design flaws earlier, greatly improving time-to-market and communication quality in cell phones, cable modems, PDAs and other wireless devices.

'Our work with Ansoft brings the full benefits of virtual instrumentation to RF system design,' says Mihir Ravel, NI's technology and corporate development VP. 'By integrating LabView with Ansoft Designer, engineers can take advantage of powerful math and digital signal processing tools for signal analysis and connect to the broadest array of instruments.'

Ansoft develops electronic design automation (EDA) software, which engineers use to design electronic products, such as cellular phones, Internet-access devices, broadband networking components and systems, integrated circuits (ICs), printed circuit boards (PCBs), automotive electronic systems, power electronics and fuel-cell technology.

Control Engineering Daily News Desk
Jim Montague, news editor
jmontague@reedbusiness.com