Electromagnetic simulators in radio frequency power amplifier design

Computer aided design tools such as electromagnetic and circuit simulators have been commonly used in engineering applications to expedite the design process, increase system performance, and reduce the associated cost by eliminating the needs for several prototypes before their implementation. RF power amplifiers are most of the time simulated by non-linear circuit simulators. In the simulation of RF amplifiers, it is common practice to assume the components such as inductors, capacitors and all other passive components to be ideal. This assumption drastically reduces the accuracy of the simulation results and ignores electromagnetic effects such as coupling, radiation, etc.