AWR DESIGN ENVIRONMENT QUICK START GUIDE

The AWR Design Environment (AWRDE) suite comprises three powerful tools that can be
used together to create an integrated system and RF or analog design environment: Visual
System SimulatorTM (VSS), Microwave Office (MWO), and Analog Office (AO) software.
These powerful tools are fully integrated in the AWR Design Environment suite and allow you
to incorporate circuit designs into system designs without leaving the AWR Design
Environment. In this course, the focus will be on Microwave Office simulator.
Here are some guidelines to start with the software.
1. To start the AWRDE suite choose
Start > Programs > AWR 2010 > AWR Design Environment
The following main window displays. You can see the general appearance and tabs of the
software in this picture

M. Sadegh Dadash and Kaveh Moussakhani, Fall 2010; Justin J. McCombe, Fall 2015

2. To create a project or open a project, choose respectively

File > New Project

File > Open Project

3. To set units, Environmental options and Simulation options

double-click Project Options in the Project Browser

in the Frequencies tab, determine simulation frequency range

This frequency sweep is global, but you can specify different sweep for each
schematic, simply right-click on the specified schematic and select options.

in the Global Units tab, determine the units for parameters in your design
This setting is applied for all of the schematics in the project.

4. To create a schematic for your circuit

right-click Circuit Schematics in the Project Browser and choose New Schematic.
5. To add or edit circuit elements for use in your schematics

click the Elements tab in the lower left window

choose the desired element in the Circuits Elements and click and drag it into the
schematic window
to edit model parameters, double-click the element graphic in the schematic window

or press Ctrl+L in schematic window and type the name of element which you want.
6. To add ports to a schematic diagram
expand the Ports category in the Element Browser and choose a suitable one.
7. To connect element block nodes with a wire
position the cursor over a node, click at this position to mark the beginning of the wire and
slide the mouse to a location where a bend is needed. Click again to mark the bend point.
8. To view the results of your circuit and system simulations before you perform a simulation,
you create a graph and specify the data or measurements that you want to plot

right-click Graphs in the Project Browser

M. Sadegh Dadash and Kaveh Moussakhani, Fall 2010; Justin J. McCombe, Fall 2015

choose New Graph to display a dialog box in which to specify a graph name and
graph type
right click on the created graph and select Add Measurement then choose the desired
results that you want to plot.

9. To run a simulation on the active project, choose

Simulate > Analyze (or press F8)
Sometimes you need to use previously defined schematic as a subcircuit in another schematic. In
this case, the previously defined circuit appears as an N-port device in the new schematic. In
order to do this, follow these steps:

open a new schematic

right click on Circuit Schematics and choose New Schematic
click Elements tab in the lower left window
choose Subcircuit in the Elements browser
choose the desired schematic and drag and drop it in the schematic window

In addition to use a previously defined schematic in the new circuit, there is a capability to define
a 2-port block with desired S-parameters and use that block in your circuit. This is particularly
useful when you want to represent a particular device in your circuit but you only want to use its
port information, not to design the whole device.
For this purpose there are two options:

first, you can enter the S-parameters in the circuit [note that these values are assumed
constant in the whole frequency range]
second, you can import S-parameters from a text file [this gives you the ability to define
the S-parameters for each frequency].

Here are the steps which you need to define N-port blocks:

click Elements tab in the lower left window

choose Network blocks in the Elements browser
to choose a 2-port network, select S2P_BLK, and then enter the S-parameter
information in the block
to choose an N-port S-parameter block, select NPORT_F and then import the S-parameter
information from a touchstone format text file.

More information can be found in the Help. There are also number of examples which can be
accessed using File > Open Example, which can be used to become more familiar with
the software and its capabilities.

M. Sadegh Dadash and Kaveh Moussakhani, Fall 2010; Justin J. McCombe, Fall 2015

10.

To copy a circuit from one project to another

11.

open both projects in separate instances of AWR.

select the circuit components by clicking and dragging the box around the components to
select multiple components, or by holding shift while clicking on the components you
want to copy.
with everything selected, copy the elements Edit > Copy (ctrl+c)
in the second project, paste the elements Edit > Paste (ctrl+v)
click where you would like to place the element/circuit
Time Domain Reflectometry

Generally, a Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) transmits a short-rise time pulse along the
conductor. If the conductor is of a uniform impedance and properly terminated, the entire
transmitted pulse will be absorbed in the far-end termination and no signal will be reflected
toward the TDR. Any impedance discontinuities will cause some of the incident signal to be sent
back towards the source.
AWR has the capability to emulate a TDR. You can find this application in Graph >
Measurements > Linear.
It has four options. LP options are for low-pass and BP options are for band-pass frequency
ranges. I and S are impulse and step responses, respectively.

M. Sadegh Dadash and Kaveh Moussakhani, Fall 2010; Justin J. McCombe, Fall 2015

The time duration of the TDR is inversely proportional to the frequency step of the simulation.

M. Sadegh Dadash and Kaveh Moussakhani, Fall 2010; Justin J. McCombe, Fall 2015