Towards automated full-wave design of microwave circuits

To keep up with the fast development of wireless systems short design cycles are required. At the same time the pool of experienced engineers is limited. In order to remain competitive at the world marked companies will require new electronic design automation tools that are capable of automated design of high frequency circuits. Such tools do not exist yet but promising results have been obtained by using surrogate models constructed form data computed with full wave solvers. Being almost as accurate as electromagnetic simulations surrogate models allow one to explore the design space very quickly. These models can be used for the design in both frequency and, if used with a fast passivity enforcement scheme also in time domain. Combined with appropriate optimization techniques they allow a fast synthesis of complex circuits. The accuracy of the synthesis is so good that only a few full wave simulations are required to fine tune the design. As a results the design of complex circuits such as filters and multiplexers can be fully automated.