Services

RF Design

I’m an RF Consultant with over 25 years of industry experience in Silicon Valley – designing, implementing and testing analog, RF and microwave circuits. I’ve designed circuits up to 80GHz. I’ve designed RF and microwave circuits on PCB (Rogers material), thin film (alumina), and RFIC (on chip inductors, transformers, baluns).

Compact Hairpin filter that I designed onto a PCB

EM Simulation

Much of my work includes EM simulation that stretches the boundary of a design, customizes a design for specific purpose or verifies a complete design. I own my own copy of Sonnet Software a mature 2.5D Electromagnetic simulation solver. I use this tool with my PCB tool, Altium for RF designs on PCB.

I’ve also used HFSS since 1998 – if your company has a license for EM tools such as HFSS or CST then I’ll be able to set up, run, train or help with your EM simulations. I regularly use Ansys software – Q3D, Maxwell 3D, and HFSS. Temporary licenses can be purchased. I work with Ozen Engineering, Inc. an Ansys elite channel partner for my licensing needs.

PCB Design

I purchased my own copy of Altium Designer for schematic capture and layout. If your company already has Altium Designer then you’ll be able to collaborate using Altium 365 (cloud based). Straight RF, is listed as a service bureau outsourcing partner on the Altium website

Test Equipment

I own a small RF lab and have the ability to design, test and build small prototypes up to 26.5GHz. An advantage of using a lab while designing and creating schematics is that I can test an evaluation board – or hand solder an IC quickly for evaluation. This can be very helpful during the early part of a design.

8510C VNA 45MHz – 26.5GHz
8753B VNA 300KHz – 3GHz
8563E Spectrum Analyzer 30Hz – 26.5GHz
HP437B Power Meter – with a thermal sensor 10MHz – 18GHz
Rohde & Schwartz Signal Generator SMIQ 03B 300KHZ – 3.3GHZ
Agilent 33220A function generator – works to 20MHz
Rigol DS4024 Digital Oscilloscope – 200MHz
HP 1740a 100MHz Oscilloscope

Training

I’ve used HFSS since 1998, I own a copy of Sonnet Software, and I own a copy of Altium Designer (since 2015). I’ve helped many engineers ‘get up to speed’ with all of these software tools and other popular engineering CAD tools. Often, I’ll provide advice, tips or simply ‘how to’ accomplish a task through a phone call or Teams meeting – but, I can travel (within Silicon Valley) to your site as well.