What simulator is better for LTCC?

CST?
Q3D+DESIGNER+HFSS?
or other？

Hi,

For reasonably low frequency (let say roughly 10GHz) any 2.5D or 3D planar simulator will be accurate enough. I did some simulations in the past and they were all giving more-less the same results. The simulators I tested were Sonnet, Momentum, IE3D, Esemble. The major difference when using them was the simulation time and ease of drawing the geometries in the drawing editor. Having everything in mind, I will recoment Sonnet as the best solution. The conclusion on this topic, however, depends a lot on a particular structure you are analizing.

For high fequency, I will recommand some full 3D solver like HFSS or CST. Again, the trade offs are depending on a your problem.

flyhigh

yeming,

Ansoft software is being used very succesfully for LTCC design.
I recommend to read the article from Microwave Journal describing an LTCC design flow.

Automating and Optimizing High Performance LTCC Design
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In addition there was recently in Italy a whole day about LTCC design using Ansoft software. You can contact Ansoft in your area and ask for them to demonstrate it for you. If they need more information, the Italian office will be able to provide with material on LTCC.

In the Ansoft 2004 "Partners in Design" show, there was a presentation describing the Ansoft LTCC library.
Filter Design Flow and Implementation in LTCC
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Hope this helps,
Itai

itaifrenkel
thank you very much,
you informationg is useful for me.
By the way,
Where can I download the LTCC design kit?
Thank you again.

yeming,

I am not sure about this. Contact your local Ansoft support. I think that if they will contact Italy or Japan (or ofcourse the US) they will have access to it.

Regards,
Itai

Hi,

as I understand now, the answer to your question is dependent on what you will like to do - need to develop your own models for technology you have in control or to start with designing circuits using technology from some other company as foundry based product with existing models and procedures and design flow established.

Ansoft is great company and sofware thay produce is among my favorites. Considering LTCC, they have implemented in Designer 2.0 foundry-like service for technology process from LTCC Korean company Taiyo Yuden. You can work with models and layouts of components that can be easily transfered to EM simulators for final check. However, the models etc. are tailored for this specific technology.

Considering general LTCC design flow, you can use Microwave Office environment as well, they also have some examples on VCO and filters. For the moment they are not offering any foundry-like service that I am aware of.

Some LTCC companies have deveolped foundries for ADS as well. In this environment user have component model that can be simulated in circuit simulator, layout automatically generated and than the whole or the parts of circuit transfered from layouts to Momentum (built in ADS), Sonnet (embridge from Sonnet soft) or IMST Empire for final check.

As you can see, there is established design flow in all three of the main stream EDA products. If you have one or the other you can talk to the support and get the relevant information

flyhigh