Appendix A.

Optional Parameters and Setup of MGRID and IE3D

The optional parameters are configured in the Param->Optional Parameters dialog on MGRID. Correct setup of the Optional Parameters will make your use of the IE3D more convenient and accurate. The dialog for the optional parameters is shown in Figure A.1. in the Optional Parameters dialog, you can configure many things for the MGRID and IE3D. They become the default settings for your parameters when you use the MGRID and IE3D. We will discuss the major optional parameters in the following.

Figure A.1 The Optional Parameters dialog 1. Basic Parameters:

We have been defining Basic Parameters for each IE3D geometry. The IE3D 11 allows us to use many of the defined basic parameters for a new IE3D structure we create. 2. Length Unit:

Length Unit is one of the Basic Parameters. It allows a user to choose the length unit he is most familiar for layout editing. 3. Conductor Assumption Limit (CAL):

CAL is one of the Basic Parameters. We define the infinite ground plane as a substrate with high conductivity. The CAL is used to determine whether a substrate is an infinite ground plane or a lossy substrate. Internally, they are treated differently. Normally, we should set CAL to 1.0e+6. From (3) of Chapter 3, we know that the conductivity is really related to the rc in the equation. For HTS superconductor, the in the formula is small. However, |Im( r )| is a big number. Therefore, our criteria for infinite ground plane is actually big | rc|. Due to the contribution of to rc is frequency dependent. We will use the | rc| at 1 GHz for our criteria. We define the CAL in this way: When | rc| at 1

GHz < CAL, we consider the dielectrics as normal dielectrics. When | rc| at 1 GHz CAL, we consider the dielectrics as ground plane. In the Edit Substrate dialog (see Figure 3.6), there is a parameter Factor. It is basically the | rc| at 1 GHz. Because we compare the CAL to | rc| at 1GHz), we would not know directly whether a lossy substrate with finite is considered as a ground plane or just a normal lossy substrate. For most circuits with the of the ground plane about 107 (s/m), we really want to consider it as a ground plane. For some semi-conductor substrate, there might be some dielectric layer with the about 1000 (s/m). This dielectric layer will be on top of the true ground plane with the of the ground plane about 10 7 (s/m). In such a case, you may want to model the effect of the semi-conductor substrate. You should define the right CAL until you see the horizontal line on the metal layer on the interface of the semi-conductor substrate disappears. Saved in .\ie3d\samples\cal1.geo is an example. The dielectric setup for the structure is shown in Figure A.2. When you open the file on MGRID, you will see 3 polygon layers in the Layer Window. No.0 layer at Z = 0 mm., No.2 layer at Z = 0.25 mm and No.2 layer at Z = 0.5 mm. You will see a line across the No.1 layer at Z = 0 mm, meaning it is an infinite ground plane. When you set the CAL in the Param>Basic Parameters dialog to 10000, you will see there is a line across the No.3 layer at Z = 0.5 mm. It means that the interface at z = 0.5 mm is the interface of a high conductivity conductor. For our case, the dielectrics from z > 0.5 mm is considered as the top ground plane.

Figure A.2 The dielectric setup for .\ie3d\samples\cal1.geo. 4. Max DK:

When IE3D does a meshing, it will use the estimated effective dielectric constant Ereff to find the meshing size. The estimated Ereff is from the substrate configuration. Normally, every regular substrate (except ground plane layer) is used to do the estimation. However, some substrate with large value of permittivity (Er) and permeability (Mur) may cause IE3D to over-estimate the Ereff. Over estimated Ereff may cause IE3D to mesh a structure into fine cells and it may slow down the simulation. The Max DK allows us to exclude those substrates with large value of (Er Mur) from the list for the estimation of the Ereff. 5. Matrix Solver There are quite some matrix solvers available on the IE3D. Interested users should read Chapters 12 and 13 for more information on different matrix solvers. We would like to give more comments on the Separation Distance (SD) in the following paragraph. The SD is used in the partial matrix solvers and iterative matrix solvers. For IE3D, the matrix is always a full matrix. However, it is a diagonal dominant matrix. Many offdiagonal elements are insignificant especially for large structures. Each matrix element is corresponds to the coupling between 2 cells as shown in Figure A.3. The coupling between the cell 1 and cell 3 is much weaker than the coupling between cell 1 and cell 2. The coupling between the cell 1 and cell 4 is even much weaker. The difference might be a few orders in the corresponding matrix elements. Because the coupling between cell 1 and cell 4 is so weak compared with other couplings, we may not need to consider A-2

it because it can be negligible. If we neglect the coupling between 2 far away cells, we will obtain a sparse matrix. We will denote the matrix solver for the sparse matrix as Partial Matrix Solver (PMS) in order to distinguish it from SMSi and SMSa. We introduce a parameter called Separation Distance (SD) to identify which coupling is negligible. As it is shown in Figure A.3, for any cell with a distance to cell 1 smaller than the SD, the coupling between this cell and cell 1 will be considered. When a cell with a distance to cell 1 larger than the SD, the coupling between the cell and cell 1 will be neglected. Same rule applies to any cell in the layout. Starting from IE3D 8.0, the SD is defined as number of cells. Normally, we recommend users to choose the SD = 5 to 15 cells.

Figure A.3 A 2-element patch antenna array. The selection of SD is very critical to the accuracy of the PMS and the convergence of the IMS. There is no way to guarantee a SD with converged IMS. Apparently, when we choose the SD to be 0, the IMS will always diverge. When we choose the SD to be the largest distance between cells, the IMS is basically FMS and the iteration always converges, and it also defeats the purpose of PMS and IMS. We need to choose the right SD so that we can fast convergence with the least memory and time. The Iteration Relative Error, Iteration Absolute Error, Maximum Iterations, AIMS Epsilon are for controlling the convergence of the iterative matrix solvers. They should not be changed normally. The Buffer Size should not be changed either. For planar circuits and antennas, a good suggestion for SD is about 10 times of the substrate thickness. For 3D structures, the SD should be chosen to be larger because the off-diagonal terms do not decay so fast. SD is used in IMS, AIMS solvers and GEMS solvers. SD too large will cause iterative matrix solvers to use more RAM and more stable. However, more RAM will defeat the purpose. SD too small will cause iterative matrix solvers not converging. We found that SD can be smaller in GEMS Normally, default SMSa is a very efficient matrix solver. It should be always used except for very large structures.Iterative matrix solvers GEMS-F, GEMS-I, AIMS II and AIMS III may be able to solve loosely coupled large structures much easier. When you choose FMS, SMSi, SMSa or GEMS solvers, IE3D will prompt you for the Matrix Solver Parameters. Please pay attention to the FMS TO SMSI SWITCH, SMSI TO GEMS-F SWITCH and GEMS-F TO GEMS-I SWITCH. If you set FMS TO SMSI SWITCH below 1000, IE3D will automatically choose the right solver for you when you choose SMSa. It will use FMS when the RAM is enough for faster speed and SMSi when the RAM is not enough. The SMSI TO GEMS-F SWITCH will allow IE3D engine to switch to GEMS-F solver from SMSi when no enough RAM is available. The GEMS-F TO GEMS-I SWITCH will do the same thing between GEMS-F TO GEMS-I. GEMS-I should not be used whenever RAM is enough because it can be very slow. You also have the FASTA option implemented in IE3D 11.5. It is discussed in other appendex of the manual. It can help reducing RAM and speed up simulation. 6. Automatic Edge Cells (AEC) and Meshing Parameters: A-3

AEC and Meshing Parameters are part of the Basic Parameters. The AEC is further improved. Please read Appendix AL for more information. 7. Cells on De-Embedding Arms: The Cells on De-Embedding Arms (Ncdea) control how many cells we want to put on the deembedding arm of an extension port. The larger the Ncdea is, the better accuracy. However, it will take more cells for a simulation. Normally, Ncede should be at least 3. The default is 5. Starting from IE3D 11, we can configure Automatic Adjustment for port extensions. IE3D will automatically detect whether a port extension is long enough based upon some user defined criteria. It will automatically add extra cells in case a port extension is too short.

Figure A.4 Matrix Solver Parameters dialog. 8. Default Output Parameters: The Default Output Parameters option is a newly introduced option for the IE3D 10.0. The purpose of introducing the Default Output Parameters is to make the simulation results in more readable format for post-processing. As you know, the primary simulation results are the s-parameters in Agilent/EEsof Touchstone format. The Touchstone format is adopted by most microwave and RF simulators. A file in original Touchstone format limits an s-parameter value to 4 digits. It is quite easy to read. However, it introduces very serious accuracy problem, especially at low frequency, due to loss of digits. For this reason, we always keep at least 10 digit accuracy for the IE3D. A-4

Some users want to get the s-parameters in more readable formats. Some users want to get parameters other than the s-parameters. Although we can always get any other parameters on MODUA after a simulation, it would be nice to let the IE3D engine to output different parameters of interests in a nice tabular format easy to be read by the users. The parameters can be used by users to automate the postprocessing. For the above reason, we introduced an optional output file called Indexed Parameter Array file with extension .IPA. We will refer it as IPA file in the discussion below. Table A.1 Parameters output in the IPA file. Parameter Format Description S-Parameters dB, Mag, Ang The s-parameters are not necessary to be normalized to S(i,j) Re, Im characteristic impedance Zci = 50 ohms. The users can modify the Zci to other value in the Modify button on the Simulation Setup dialog. Y-Parameters Mag, Ang The Y-parameters are defined in standard textbooks. Y(i,j) Re, Im Z-Parameters Mag, Ang The Z-Parameters are defined in standard textbooks. Z(i,j) Re, Im Z for S-Parameters Mag, Ang The Zsp(i,j) is not defined in any textbook. It is defined as: Zsp(i,j) Re, Im Zsp(i,j) = (Zci Zcj ) [1 + S(i,j) ] / [ 1 S(i, j) ]. Please understand that Zsp(1,1) = Z(1,1) for 1-port structure. However, for a general N-port structure, Zsp(i,j) Z(i,j). The IPA file is nicely formatted. It allows the users to output combinations of the parameters documented in Table A.1. On the Param->Optional Parameters dialog, you can configure which groups of parameters will be written into the IPA file as default (see Figure A.5). However, in the Simulation Setup dialog (see Figure 3.16), you can still decide which detail item you want to output. If you select no group, the .IPA file will not be created. Shown in Figure A.4 is the dialog with 7 groups of parameters selected. However, the number of items written to an IPA file may be different from this number. 9. Default File Format:

The most popular IE3D geometry file formats are IE3D 9.0, IE3D XML and IE3D XML 2.0 file formats. They are discussed in Appendix B. Please read Appendix B for more information. 10. After Setup: After a simulation setup, you can allow MGRID to invoke the IE3D engine for simulation. You can also allow MGRID to create the .sim file for batch simulation later. For those IE3D licenses without the engines, the users can choose to append the simulation jobs into a simulation queue so that the simulation job can be handled by other licenses with the IE3D engine. 11. Default Edit Mode: MGRIDs default editing mode is Draw Mode. Some users may want it to be configured as Selection mode. You can choose the default here.

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12. Default Selection Focus: On MGRID, when you go into a selection mode, MGRID will set the selection focus to all layers by default. However, you can configure MGRID to focus on the current updated layer or the checked layers when you select the selection mode. 13. Accuracy Controls: Accuracy control parameters are used internally. Please try not to change them unless you are instructed to. 14. Other Parameters: The parameters in the Other group are used to control how MGRID displays the information of the structure.

Figure A.5 The Default Output Parameters dialog allowing a user to configure the group of parameters.

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