Electronic design automation (EDA) is a category of automated design tools used to develop and manufacture the hardware component of a range of electronic systems including field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)/programmable logic devices (PLDs), integrated circuits (ICs), printed circuit boards (PCBs), and systems-on-a-chip (SoCs). These systems often contain a mix of analog, digital and RF circuitry. While the analog and RF sections of the system make up a much smaller portion of the design than their digital counterpart, they are by far the most difficult to design, requiring substantially more time and expertise. In fact, in systems design, roughly 75% of the design time is spent on RF design. Of that 75%, 25% is spent on actual design work and 75% on interface, library and integration issues.

Given these facts, it might be natural to assume that RF design is today aided by a wealth of highly advanced EDA tools, flows and methodologies. This is not the case. In fact, EDA tools and methodologies for the digital realm remain far more advanced then those which are typically used for analog and RF design. Even so, automated design tools whether those of the inexpensive, web-based variety or those which are costly and full-featured can play an important role in enabling you to create fully optimized RF designs more productively than was previously possible with more manual techniques.

In this chapter, we will discuss the specific types of tools which can aid both the expert and novice design engineer with RF design tasks. But...