everything RF recently interviewed Tony Gasseling who is the Managing Director at AMCAD Engineering. Tony Gasseling has been responsible for the general business development of the company, which specializes in selling turnkey solutions to help customers develop more secure, energy-efficient wireless communications systems. In 2004, he set up AMCAD Engineering, a spin-off from the XLIM laboratory, with two other classmates. The company's first activity was to provide services for semiconductor testing and modeling to facilitate and optimize the design of RF power amplifiers.
Q. Can you tell us about AMCAD Engineering?
Tony Gasseling: AMCAD Engineering’s mission is to enable customers to develop more innovative, higher-performance, energy-efficient radio frequency communication systems.
Q. AMCAD caters to three main segments - Foundry, OEM and RF System Designers. Can you tell us a little about each sector and how you help them? Which segment is the largest for you?
Tony Gasseling: AMCAD's historical activity was to offer test and modeling solutions for foundries involved in designing component technologies, such as RF transistors. One thing led to another: specific software solutions were developed to help OEMs test RF circuits, such as RF amplifiers.
Finally, today, right to the end of the value chain, we help systems integrators who use the circuits manufactured by OEMs - to optimize the overall performance of their communications systems. Our main source of revenue is still linked to our historical business, but we are seeing significant sales growth in other segments.
Q. AMCAD has developed a range of RF modeling and testing software solutions. Can you tell us about each software product? How do these software products help engineers in the design and optimization of microwave circuits?
Tony Gasseling: The main goal of IVCAD software is to enable efficient design of MMIC circuits before the circuit goes into production by considerably reducing the risk of obtaining measurement results that differ from those obtained in simulation, thanks to accurate transistor models and consistent device characterization. This enables our customers to avoid iterative design flows, costly and time-consuming retro-engineering phases.
Once produced, IQSTAR software is used to perform tests on these RF circuits and generate indisputable measurement results, regardless of the instruments or people in charge of the tests. The data thus generated can be considered valuable reference data.
Finally, VISION software can exploit the measurement results produced by IQSTAR to extract equivalent behavioral models of these circuits. These unique circuit models make it possible to simulate a complete chain made up of several circuits and to predict with certainty what the system's overall specifications are before it is assembled, even in the presence of complex phenomena such as interactions between antennas or non-linear front-end circuits, and even in the presence of very broadband signals such as those used for 5G.
Q. What distinguishes AMCAD's RF characterization software from other manufacturers? Are these standalone software products, or are they designed to be used/set up by AMCAD as part of a larger solution?
Tony Gasseling: IVCAD is a unique software package because, in conjunction with our Pulse IV generator, it enables RF transistors to be tested under extreme operating conditions without the risk of degrading their performances or, worse, destroying the component under test.
This is made possible because, during testing, the Pulse IV instrument generates very powerful pulses (several hundred volts and up to several tens of amperes) but for very short durations (a few hundred nanoseconds). Compared with conventional tests, we are, therefore able to gather much more information about the behavior of the component under test. This unique information is then used to extract transistor models, which also become unique. Indeed, because the model contains more valuable information, it is more accurate than ordinary models for RF amplifier design work. These models are compatible with the main circuit simulators on the market.
IQSTAR is also a unique software package. Our customers face two major obstacles when it comes to testing their circuits. The test benches we see in laboratories are generally made up of more than a dozen instruments of different brands and used by several engineers or technicians. It's not uncommon to find that different measurement results are obtained for the same circuit depending on the instruments used or the person in charge of the measurements. To avoid this problem, we have developed IQSTAR software, which contains over 1000 instrument drivers. Test interfaces are standardized, and the user is guided step by step through the entire process, from bench calibration to advanced data processing, ensuring fast, repeatable and trusted results.
Finally, VISION software package leverages these reliable measurement results in the form of equivalent behavioral models. The equation solver built into our models enables unequalled system simulation accuracy, even in modulated signals and non-ideal operating conditions where the end-to-end circuits are not perfectly matched. These circuit models can also be used in third-party system simulators, as we aim to adapt to the needs of our customers, regardless of their system simulation tools.
Q. Can you tell us more about the RF test equipment that AMCAD develops? Do you develop custom solutions based on a customer's requirement, or do you have a range of standard products available for customers to select?
Tony Gasseling: On the one hand, we supply standard instruments, such as our Pulse IV system or our RF vector signal transceiver. On the other hand, we also develop RF building blocks, which can be assembled to provide customized test instruments according to customer requirements. This is particularly true of our Automatic Test Equipment solutions, which complement our IQSTAR test software to speed up and automate complex measurement sequences in test and production environments.
Q. What RF test services does AMCAD offer?
Tony Gasseling: AMCAD is a solution provider, but our team uses the solutions we develop on a daily basis. We provide basic RF measurement services, including load-pull measurements, RF circuit measurements with modulated signals, and transistor or circuit modeling services. We have a range of modern test stations and test instruments to support this activity. Our aim is to ensure that the solutions we supply to our customers are reliable and robust and that we can validate our developments, being the first beta users. It's also a way for our customers to test our solutions in our lab and see the value proposition. Sometimes, a measurement or modeling service can be the first step in such collaboration when the investment budget is not yet available. In general, once our customers have seen the value of our solutions, they want to apply them in their business. It is also very useful to have such a laboratory for support activities. In case of a problem, we reproduce our customers' test bench, enabling us to speak the same language moving forward.
Q. What is a Vector Signal Transceiver? Where is this used? Can you tell us more about the VST that AMCAD has developed?
Tony Gasseling: I don't want to get too far into marketing concepts, but our VST is an "Ocean Blue" test instrument. We have developed some very innovative test software, such as IQSTAR. Such software can be used to drive high-end instruments seamlessly. Unfortunately, these test instruments sometimes exceed our customers' budgets and are sometimes an overkill solution. We propose to reuse the COTS RF transceivers, or RF SoC chips, usually found in Remote Radio Heads (RRHs), and transform them into measurement instruments using IQSTAR's control capabilities. The performance of the latest chips on the market is impressive, and the pace of chip releases is equally astonishing. When you add IQSTAR on top, you can keep pace, benefit from the latest SoC technologies, and get the same measurement experience you would get with a high-end instrument. Our latest solution is based on AMD's Zynq Ultrascale product. It offers up to 1.2 GHz instantaneous bandwidth, with integrated DPD capabilities AMD’s IP for linearizing power amplifiers. Combined with IQSTAR, you get a powerful, cost-effective measurement solution to test your power amplifier in Radio Remote Head conditions.
Q. What is the antenna simulation tool that AMCAD has developed? What problems does it help you solve?
Tony Gasseling: VISION is a tool for circuit modeling and system simulation. From EM simulation, circuit-level simulation or even RF measurements, reference data are converted into an equivalent behavioral model. Thanks to the capabilities of the model equation solver, it is then possible to simulate large-scale system architecture, such as active antennas used for dynamic beamforming. This solution results from over 20 years of R&D carried out by partners in the defence and aerospace industries. We believe that such a solution can be advantageous today to design systems for the telecommunications market that use the same active antenna concept. The system designer can try different scenarios, such as removing the isolator between the power amplifier and the antenna and simulating the response as a function of radiation angle (elevation and azimuth).
The coupling effects between the various antenna elements are taken into account when calculating the load impedance supplied to the PA, and the behavior of the latter circuit is then updated accordingly, thanks to the two-way simulation capabilities of our models, even for data flow simulations where complex signal modulations have to be handled. Moreover, these models can realistically describe the short- and long-term memory effects in circuits, making our solution unique.
Q. Who are your customers? Where are they located? How do you support customers who are located in different geographies?
Tony Gasseling: We generate around 30% of our business in the USA, 40% in Europe and 30% in the APAC region. We needed to address the global market from the outset, and we still do.
To support customers based in different geographical areas, we work with valuable partners, either as representatives or as technical partners who can provide local technical assistance. For example, Maury Microwave helps us to support our customers for load pull measurement applications with IVCAD. We are currently in discussions with other technical and business partners to further expand our global footprint in other areas to address the market for CAD tools for system simulations, for example. Our support team is also very committed to supporting our customers worldwide, and Zacharia Ouardirhi, in charge of business development and technical support, is based in Canada. He bridges the gap when support is needed on the West Coast of the USA.
Q. What is your product and software roadmap for the next three years?
Tony Gasseling: IVCAD is a proven solution for managing pulsed IV, load-pull measurements, model extraction and stability analysis of power amplifiers. Once the models have been extracted, they are exported to third-party simulators. In general, we need to provide simulation templates that fit the circuit simulation tool of our customers so that they can finalize the model refinement with respect to the load pull measurements in non-linear conditions. Our R&D team is currently hard at work on a future IVCAD solution. This solution will really speed up the measurement and modeling of RF transistors by streamlining all the different steps in one unique platform.
IQSTAR will soon be updated with new modulated signal management capabilities. Customers will be able to standardize how they modulate and demodulate LTE and 5G signals on their circuits and use advanced measurement reports that will incorporate impressive post-processing solutions.
Everything you can do with IQSTAR in the world of real measurements, you'll also be able to do the same in the digital world, using VISION. Both solutions will use the same building blocks, so real-world and digital-world engineers will speak the same language, this is how you create real digital twins. No more wall gardens.
Finally, we're excited about the tomorrow’s hardware solutions being developed as extensions to our software solutions, and we hope to tell you more about them very soon.
About AMCAD Engineering
AMCAD Engineering is an innovative company, specializing in the development of software and hardware solutions for testing, modeling and simulating radiofrequency electronic circuits. The company delivers at every stage of the product lifecycle, critical services needed to ensure the greatest optimization of performance and time-to-market. AMCAD offers the most advanced solutions in RF/microwave engineering (pulsed IV DC/RF, Load-Pull, simulations etc.).
AMCAD Engineering has large international groups as customers that develop semiconductor technologies, in the field of electronics for telecommunications, as well as in the aerospace and defense fields. They also have close relationships with equipment manufacturers who use these semiconductors to develop communication systems that must be reliable, robust, and secure, such as 5G.
