Microwave Office

Success Story

Legrand uses the interactive layout capability in Microwave

Office Design Suite to minimize the size of its PCBs

Customer Background Customer:

Legrand is the world specialist in products and systems for electrical installations Legrand
and data networks in residential, commercial and industrial buildings. With Application:
more than 33,000 employees worlwide, the Legrand group has over 60 units Electrical installations and data
worldwide and sells in more than 160 countries, with a turnover totalling over networks
€3,7billion. The RF design group specializes in data distribution and wireless
control of domestic appliances. AWR Products:
Microwave Office® Design Suite and
The RF Design Challenge Visual System Simulator™
Legrand’s develops integrated systems on printed circuit boards (PCBs) for the
consumer market. Demand for smaller products is driving strict size constraint
on PCBs within the products, therefore optimization of the PCB layout is critical.
The ability to concurrently simulate both system and circuit performance is also
important, as components designed in Microwave Office® must be accurately
modeled with input signals in various digital formats.

“AWR software has

helped us to create
world class optimized
PCBs enabling us to
offer our customers
industry-leading
products in the most
2.4GHz system co-simulated with Microwave office and Visual System Simulator compact packages
available on the market
today.”
Vincent Grigis
RF Engineer
Legrand
www.legrandelectric.com
 The Solution

What design problem did AWR’s software

help you to solve?
Visual System Simulator enabled us to pass complex digital
signals through the amplifier sub-systems that we had designed
in Microwave Office, and to check the effects of mismatch and
compression on overall system performance. We were able to
vary the values of individual components in the amplifier and see
the effect on overall system performance.

What were your reasons for choosing AWR

software?
We performed rigorous benchmarks on several RF simulation
products – we selected AWR because the simulation results were
Frontend ISM band home automotion receiver simulation
the most accurate compared to measured results. The AWR
results agreed well with the measurements
design environment user interface was the most user-friendly,
and even infrequent users found it especially easy to use. In
addition, the unified database and automatic layout generation
enabled us to optimize our layouts to meet the size constraints of
our specifications.

What were the key benefits of using AWR

software?
With the open architecture of the AWR design environment,
integration to third party products such as CST’s 3D EM
simulation software was easy and the co-simulation process using
both Visual System Simulator and Microwave Office was simple.
These unique technologies enabled us to produce a state-of-the-
art consumer product in a package significantly smaller than our
competitors.
The automatic layout generation and the simulator engine
Product Overview
helped us to obtain a good agreement between simulations and
the “on board” measurements
Microwave Office design suite is the industry’s fastest growing
microwave design platform and has completely revolutionized the
communications design world by providing users with a superior
choice. Built on the unique AWR high-frequency platform with
its open design environment and unified data model, Microwave
Office design suite offers unparalleled ease-of-use, powerful
technologies, and unprecedented openness and interoperability,
enabling integration with best-in-class tools for each part of the
design process. Microwave Office software includes all of the
essential technology: linear and non-linear circuit simulators, EM
analysis tools, integrated schematic and layout, statistical design
capabilities, and parametric cell libraries with built-in DRC.
The 2006 product release continues to deliver key productivity
improvements, such as faster EM simulation, faster and higher
capacity layout, and a more integrated EM editor, that shorten
design cycle time and speed time-to-market for RF/microwave
products.
The unique combination of APLAC’s incomparable RF simulation
APLAC´s incomparable RF simulation Technology
technology and AWR’s own robust simulators provides designers
with the best of both worlds: powerful, speedy simulation
capabilities for both large and highly nonlinear designs within an
easy-to-use, integrated design platform.

Applied Wave Research, Inc., 1960 East Grand Ave., Suite 430, El Segundo, CA 90245, USA
Tel: (310) 726-3000, Fax: (310) 726-3005, Email: info@appwave.com, Web: www.appwave.com

Copyright © 2007. All Rights Reserved. AWR, the AWR logo, Microwave Office, Visual System Simulator, TestWave, Analog Office, SI Design Suite, EMSight, EM Socket, and
Intelligent Net are registered trademarks or trademarks of Applied Wave Research, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective holders.