Ansys HFSS: 3D High Frequency Electromagnetics

Automatic adaptive meshing techniques require you to specify only geometry, material properties and the desired output. The meshing process uses a highly robust volumetric meshing technique, and includes a multithreading capability that reduces the amount of memory used and accelerates time to solution. This proven technology eliminates the complexity of building and refining a finite element mesh and makes advanced numerical analysis practical for all levels of your organization.

The full-featured 3-D solid modeler and layout interface enables you to work in a layout design flow, or to import and edit 3-D CAD geometry.

HFSS 3-D Modeler: The 3-D interface enables you to model complex 3-D geometry or import CAD geometry for simulation of high-frequency components, such as antennas, RF/microwave components and biomedical devices. You can extract scattering matrix parameters (S,Y, Z parameters), visualize 3-D electromagnetic fields (near- and far-field), and generate ANSYS Full-Wave SPICE models that link to circuit simulations.

HFSS 3-D Layout: HFSS 3-D Layout is an optimized interface for layered geometry of PCBs, IC packages or on-chip embedded passives. Geometry is assembled and rendered in a 2-D design environment; however, all effects are rigorously simulated, including 3-D features such as trace thickness and etching, bondwires, solder bumps and solder balls. Layout primitives such as stack-up dimensions, anti-pad radius, trace widths or thicknesses can be easily parameterized in the design environment. HFSS 3-D Layout includes advanced phi meshing technology that is optimized for meshing silicon substrates, redistribution layers, electronic packages and PCBs.

HFSS can create 3-D EM simulation components and integrate them into larger assemblies and systems, cutting design time and fostering collaboration while protecting IP. These 3-D components can include antennas, connectors, phased arrays and highly integrated chip-package-board systems that, when utilized in HFSS, create a complete and accurate description of the devices. This capability is especially useful for sharing detailed device models within an organization and between supplier and system integrators. Simulation-ready 3-D components can be created by an expert component designer, stored in library files, and then easily added to larger system designs. You can optionally encrypt and hide design information in the 3-D component, including geometry, materials and other critical IP, and then share the component throughout the supply chain. The shared component’s behavior is fully captured in the subsequent HFSS simulation without compromising on accuracy. Sharing encrypted components enables system integrators to capture the complete electromagnetic interaction between a component, such as a supplier-provided antenna, and the installed platform.

ANSYS HFSS can simulate phased-array antennas with all electromagnetic effects, including element-to-element coupling, embedded element patterns, scan input impedance and near- or far-field radiation. Infinitely large and finite-sized arrays can be simulated efficiently by exploiting the periodic nature of the geometry. For infinite arrays, one or more antenna elements are placed within a unit cell with periodic boundary conditions on the surrounding walls to mirror fields creating an infinite number of elements in two directions. Per-element scan impedance and embedded element radiation patterns can be computed, including all mutual coupling effects. The method is especially useful for predicting array blind zones that can occur under certain scan conditions. The finite-sized array simulation technology leverages HPC domain decomposition to obtain a fast solution for large finite-sized arrays. This technology makes it possible to perform complete array analysis to predict all mutual coupling, scan impedance, element patterns, array patterns and array edge effects.

ANSYS Electronics HPC goes well beyond simple hardware acceleration to deliver groundbreaking numerical solvers and HPC methodologies optimized for multicore machines, while being scalable to take advantage of full compute cluster power.

Multithreading: ANSYS Electronics HPC takes advantage of multiple cores on a single computer to reduce solution time. Multithreading technology speeds up the initial mesh generation, matrix solves, and field recovery.

Spectral Decomposition Method: The spectral decomposition method (SDM) accelerates frequency sweeps by distributing multiple frequency points in parallel over compute cores and nodes.

Domain Decomposition Method: The domain decomposition method (DDM) accelerates the solution for larger and more complex geometries by distributing a simulation across multiple cores and networked nodes.

Periodic Domain Decomposition: Periodic domain decomposition applies DDM to finite periodic structures such as antenna arrays or frequency selective surfaces. This method virtually duplicates the geometry and mesh of the periodic unit cell and then applies the DDM algorithm to the resulting finite-sized array to solve for the unique fields for all elements.

Hybrid Domain Decomposition Method: Hybrid DDM uses DDM on models consisting of finite element (FEM) and integral equation (IE) domains. This methodology combines the virtues of FEM’s ability to handle complex geometries plus MoM’s efficient solutions for antenna and radar cross-section analysis.

Distributed Direct Matrix Solver: The distributed direct matrix solver is a distributed memory parallel technique for HFSS. The matrix solution is distributed across multiple cores or MPI-integrated computers. It provides improved scalability through increased memory access and networked core access.

The ANSYS RF Option combined with HFSS creates an end-to-end high-performance RF simulation flow. Its features include a harmonic balance circuit simulation, 2.5-D planar method of moments solver, filter synthesis and more. It also includes EMIT, a unique multifidelity approach for predicting RF cosite interference to identify root-cause EMI issues in complex RF environments.

EMIT

• A complete RF co-site and antenna coexistence analysis environment
• Automated diagnostics for rapid root-cause analysis
• Quick assessment and comparison of potential mitigation measures
• RF component library
• Multifidelity parametric radio models
• Antenna-to-Antenna coupling models

Circuit Analyses

• Linear
• Transient
• DC analysis with multiple continuation options
• Multitone harmonic balance

Shooting Method

• Oscillator analysis

Autonomous Plus Driven Sources Option

• Time varying noise and phase noise
• Envelope

Multicarrier Modulation Support

• Load pull and model support
• Periodic transfer function

The ANSYS SI option is ideal for analyzing signal integrity, power integrity and EMI caused by shrinking timing and noise margins in ICs, packages, connectors and PCBs. The ANSYS SI option adds transient circuit analysis to HFSS, which enables you to create high-speed channel designs that include the driving circuitry as well as the channel. The driving circuitry can be transistor level, IBIS-based or ideal sources. Users can select from a variety of analysis types:

• Linear network analysis
• Transient analysis
• QuickEye and VerifEye analyses for fast eye generation in high-speed channel design, bathtub curves, jitter and eye masks
• Monte Carlo analysis supporting Spectre® and HSPICE® functionality
• DC analysis with automated convergence
• Dynamic links with ANSYS Q3D Extractor and ANSYS SIwave
• IBIS-AMI analysis and model support

ANSYS Full-Wave SPICE, included in ANSYS HFSS, provides frequency-dependent SPICE models for accurate time-domain simulation in time-domain circuit analysis tools. ANSYS Full-Wave SPICE models can be created for use with ANSYS Nexxim, HSPICE®, Spectre® RF and MATLAB®. Full-Wave SPICE produces highly accurate, high-bandwidth SPICE models at the touch of a button. This capability enables you to design electronic and communication components while taking gigahertz-frequency effects into account.

Model the radar signatures of electrically very large targets and scenes with the powerful HFSS SBR+ solver. Engineers can easily perform fast radar cross section (RCS) calculations to detect objects such as aircrafts, vehicles and ships, as well as design these objects to minimise radar detection.

Shooting and bouncing rays (SBR) is a ray-tracing technique based on Physical Optics (PO), which has been extended to multi-bounce interactions through Geometric Optics (GO) ray tracing. HFSS SBR+ is suitable for efficiently solving electromagnetic problems that are hundreds and thousands of wavelengths in size. The integration of HFSS SBR+ to the available high-frequency EM solver technologies in Ansys Electronics Desktop allows radar designers to apply the best simulation technologies for predicting radar signatures of structures ranging from sub-wavelengths to kilo-wavelengths. HFSS SBR+ is ideal for the design of collision detection and avoidance systems and stealth technology.

Powered by advanced, edge diffraction physics from the PTD and UTD frameworks, HFSS SBR+ provides accurate and efficient large-scale electromagnetic modeling for structures containing metals and dielectrics, as well as structures with dielectric losses, multi-layer dielectrics and absorbing materials. Ansys now provides a single framework for all high-frequency EM solvers to facilitate a smooth and unified workflow, for solving these complex electromagnetic problems. Additionally, for radar signature analyses, HFSS SBR+ features monostatic and bi-static RCS modeling capabilities with the implementation of plane wave excitations.