Speeds time to market for 3D RF and microwave applications

By adding CHRONOS, INTEGRATED now proudly offers a complete suite of electromagnetic tools, ranging from low frequency to light waves, from static to complete transient solutions. INTEGRATED’s software programs can be seamlessly coupled to thermal analysis for an even-more thorough development.

In terms of variety of solvers, INTEGRATED now has added the Finite Difference Time Domain method; this is an addition to the Boundary Element and Finite Element solvers currently available in the company’s software packages.

CHRONOS is ideal for the analysis and design of RF and antenna applications including:

* Near field and far field applications
* Planar microwave and antenna structures
* Wire antennas
* UWB antennas
* Microwave circuits, waveguides and coaxial structures

Its easy-to-use interface enables design engineers to model the geometry and assigns its physical properties, providing fast and accurate results in both time domain and frequency domain. Time domain results can be transformed and displayed with different parameters in the frequency domain using the powerful automatic post processing tools. The move from Frequency Domain techniques into the Finite Difference Time-Domain (FDTD), combined with the parallelization of the program, brings huge time savings.

“This is the first new addition to our simulation software in years and we believe that it fills a gap in the engineers modeling tools,” comments Bruce Klimpke, INTEGRATED Engineering Software Technical Director. “We are also taking a different route with the further development of CHRONOS and inviting our customers to suggest sectors where this program could prove a useful tool. Then we will look at how it can be adjusted to meet that need.”

CHRONOS is closely related to SINGULA, INTEGRATED’s 3D high-frequency time harmonic electromagnetic analysis software and will provide designers with powerful innovative techniques such as Finite Difference Time Domain, Moment of Methods (MoM), and the Finite Element Method (FEM).

After the geometry is specified and its material properties and required outputs assigned, CHRONOS will automatically generate an efficient mesh for accurate simulation - the software includes a smart mesh generator combined with material identification code. This code has the ability to recognize all the details of any structure and decide how to distribute the mesh sizes based on the accuracy requirements of the time domain solver. CHRONOS includes the option to either generate the mesh distribution manually or automatically. The mesh is generated by placing a finer grid in the areas which have fine features and then increasing and decreasing the cell sizes gradually between the different regions whilst maintaining the accuracy requirements for the time domain solver.

The main features of CHRONOS include: smart, transparent mesh generator to improve the accuracy of the solution; a solution for broadband, or ultra-wide-band problems, from a single execution of the problem using a short pulse; special treatments to provide highly accurate field calculations; transient signals used with E-field source, voltage and current sources, and lumped sources; a wide range of E, H field, voltage and current outputs; input impedance, admittance, scattering parameters and Smith charts of s-parameter; calculation of gain, directivity, radiation pattern of antennas; high quality graphics and text utility for preparation of reports and presentations.

CHRONOS is compatible will all major CAD programs such as Tecplot, Autodesk, SolidEdge and Solidworks.