Electromagnetic simulations for nanoscale RF blocks

Next-generation nano-scale RFIC designs have an unprecedented complexity and performance that will inevitably lead to costly re-spins and loss of market opportunities. In order to cope with this, efficient and accurate models of interconnects, integrated inductors, the substrate and devices, together with their mutual interactions, need to be developed. The key idea is that integrated devices can no longer be treated in isolation as the EM interactions due to proximity effects are becoming more relevant in the behavior of the complete system. EM simulations must also address these interactions, so new procedures and models able to be included in coupled simulation must be developed. But these simulations may become very expensive as the complexity of the system increases, so model order reduction techniques able to treat these coupling effects are necessary in order to obtain a better performance. In this work some solutions for efficient simulation of such problems are introduced.