The evaluation flow for EMC behavior of RF ICs

Abstract

The evaluation flow for estimating the EMC behavior of RF ICs is proposed. Conducting the electronic design automation (EDA) tools, the evaluation flow naturally embeds in the conventional RF IC design flow and extracts the resistor, inductor, and capacitor components of the network efficiently. The results of the evaluation flow help the IC designer to generate the integrated circuit emission model (ICEM) composed of internal activity (IA) and power distribution network (PDN). It is useful for the co-design of IC, package, and board regarding the system-level EMC behavior in the very early design phase. The measured impedance of the PDN shows that the proposed flow is able to improve the accuracy of the predicted impedance. Additionally, the measured results of a board carrying an RF IC and being compliant with IEC-61967 show the proposed evaluation flow captures the salient properties of the spectrum emitted by the RF IC.