RF Toolbox

Design, model, and analyze networks of RF components

RF Toolbox provides functions, objects, and apps for designing, modeling, analyzing, and visualizing networks of radio frequency (RF) components. The toolbox supports wireless communications, radar, and signal integrity applications.

RF Toolbox lets you build networks of RF components such as filters, transmission lines, matching networks, amplifiers, and mixers. Components can be specified using measurement data such as Touchstone files, network parameters, or physical properties. The toolbox provides functions for analyzing, manipulating, and visualizing RF data. You can analyze S-parameters; convert among S, Y, Z, T, and other network parameters; and visualize RF data using rectangular and polar plots and Smith^®Charts. You can also de-embed, check, and enforce passivity, and compute group and phase delay.

The RF Budget Analyzer app lets you analyze transceiver chains in terms of noise, power, and nonlinearity and generate RF Blockset models for circuit envelope simulation. Using the rational function fitting method, you can model backplanes, interconnects, and linear components, and export them as Simulink blocks, SPICE netlists, or Verilog^®-A modules for time-domain simulation.

S-Parameters

Read and write N-port Touchstone^® files. Visualize S-parameter data on cartesian, polar, or Smith charts. Convert among network parameter formats, single-ended measurements into differential formats, and more. De-embed measured 2N-port S-parameter data to remove the effects of test fixtures and access structures.

Getting Started with S-Parameters (5 videos)

Documentation | Examples

RF Budget Analysis

Determine system-level specs of RF transceivers for wireless communications and radar systems. Analyze the noise, power, gain, and nonlinearity budget for a cascade of RF components. Use harmonic balance to accurately analyze non-linear effects. Inspect results numerically and graphically.

RF Data Analysis and System Design for Scientific Applications, Part 1: Getting Started with RF Data Analysis (45:10)

Documentation | Examples

Results of S-parameters fitting in magnitude and phase for a SAW filter.

Rational Fitting

Fit frequency domain data, such as S-parameters, and extract and analyze equivalent poles and zeros. Check and enforce passivity and causality. Use the resulting object for time-domain simulation in RF Blockset, SerDes Toolbox, or export it as an equivalent SPICE netlist or Verilog-A module.

Extracting Filter Models from RF/Microwave Measurements (28:54)

Documentation | Examples

Antenna impedance optimization with Matching Network Designer app

RF Network Design

Design RF circuits such as filters and matching networks using lumped RLC elements, transmission lines characterized by physical properties, or measured S-parameters. Select RF passive RLC components by vendor and value from the substrate scalable Modelithics^® libraries.

Introducing the Modelithics SELECT+ Library for MATLAB (23:18)

Documentation | Examples

Product Resources:

Documentation Examples Videos Technical articles Functions Requirements Release notes

Automating the Analysis of RF Measurement Data for High-Performance Computing Cables

“High-throughput, low-latency passive copper cables and active optical cables play a vital role in high-performance computing, providing interconnections between the tens, hundreds, or even thousands of nodes in a high-performance computing cluster… The S-Parameter Compliance Tool automates many manual processing steps, calculates decibel loss and other performance metrics, and generates a comprehensive report in Microsoft^® Excel^® format with detailed results and graphs. I estimate that development time would have been five to 10 times longer without the built-in functionality provided by MATLAB and RF Toolbox."