Aerospace Consulting LLC

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Microwave Circuit and System Design, Development, Simulation, Prototyping and Troubleshooting

Aerospace Consulting is a microwave design company that has provided clients, both large and small, with microwave design services from DC to 26.5 GHz. Our microwave design services include microwave circuit design, microwave amplifier design, development, and simulation, and microwave filter design. Aerospace Consulting also has the simulation tools to perform frequency planning and overall system planning and simulation for your project.

 

While we are not primarily a microwave filter company, we have the tools and experience to produce all sorts of microstrip microwave filter designs, including:

 

Edge coupled

 

Hairpin

 

Combline

 

Interdigital

 

Stepped

 

End Coupled

 

Our software allows us to perform EM (electromagnetic) simulations on these microwave filter design types so that you can be assured that your prototype design will match, or at least be as close as possible, to what you need. If you try to design microwave microstrip filters without optimizing them using EM software, you will be very disappointed with the results.

 

In the microwave frequency range, which we consider to be over any frequency over 2 GHz, using proper software tools is essential. Many people, including clients, often consider RF and microwave engineering to be some sort of "black magic" because of the seemingly strange behavior of circuits at microwave frequencies. However, there is nothing strange about the behavior if you understand the physics of microwave circuit design, and Aerospace Consulting does. Microwave circuits are no different than any other electronic circuits, but you have to pay attention to things like stray capacitances and inductances that don't have a significant effect at lower frequencies.

 

Do you have a microwave product that is not working as it should? If so, Aerospace Consulting can be your microwave design consultant to  resolve the problems with your microwave circuit design . We can test and measure your circuits. We can perform microwave circuit simulations to help identify the problems. (See our article in the Design and Troubleshooting Papers section on our quick and effective resolution of an oscillating amplifier problem. Granted, that was only at about 400 MHz, so it was more of an RF engineering consulting job, but it shows you the kind of problems that can come up with microwave circuit design.)

 

Another aspect of microwave circuit and system design and development is that packaging becomes critical. In the upper left, you see some new product designs that we have designed, developed, simulated, and prototyped for clients over the years. You see that the circuits are enclosed in aluminum boxes with feed-thru DC power connectors and sma RF connectors for the RF and microwave signals. When you deal with microwave circuit design, performance will be greatly diminished if you don't use proper packaging techniques, along with proper circuit board layout. Aerospace Consulting is expert in rf layout and uses Altium Designer for that purpose. (If you have a product that uses PCAD layout, we also have PCAD and can modify your design without having to completely recreate it in Altium Designer. This can save you a lot of money.)

 

Aerospace Consulting has been involved in RF layout and microwave circuit layout, operating at frequencies to over 20 GHz, using various substrate materials including Rogers 4350 (for the lower frequencies) and Rogers 6000, 3000, and RT/Duroid for higher frequencies. A close working relationship with the material vendor is critical to design success and we have been working with various circuit board vendors for decades.