Adaptive Mesh Generation Technique for Efficient Electromagnetic Computation in RFIC Designs

A novel adaptive mesh generation technique for efficient electromagnetic simulation of radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) is herein presented. By exploring the geometrical and physical characteristics of RFICs, some adaptive mesh treatments, such as mesh projection, edge refinement, via polymerization, etc., are utilized to improve the accuracy and efficiency of electromagnetic computations. For strong coupling structures, such as two conductors in close proximity for a relatively large area, a projection-based mesh scheme is introduced to improve the accuracy of numerical integration. Moreover, the current most likely concentrates near the edges of conductors due to the edge effect. To better model the edge effect, an edge refinement scheme is applied. For via arrays that appear common in RFICs, an automatic via aggregation approach is adopted to improve computational efficiency yet still keep good computational accuracy. Finally, some numerical examples are given to validate the computational accuracy and efficiency of the novel adaptive mesh generation technique.