RF Circuit Simulation Professional 2026 Product Release

Workflow-Based User Interface (UI)

• Breakthrough RF Circuit Simulation Professional flow-based user interface (UI) orchestrates disjoint simulation and optimization tasks into intuitive analysis workflows that can be saved, shared, and reused. 
• The RF Circuit Simulation Professional UI and workflows work identically in the industry’s most trusted EDA platforms: Keysight Advanced Design System (ADS), Cadence Virtuoso, and Synopsys Custom Compiler. 
• Integrated Python console enables interactive and quick viewing of any computed results to provide instant feedback on whether all required performance specs have been simulated and optimized.
• RF Circuit Simulation Professional reusable analysis workflows eliminate unproductive repeat analysis setups across design teams and different design platforms to maximize collaboration and productivity. 
• Nexus Connect – New visual language for RF design
  • Let you visually define intermediate simulations, optimizations, and design decisions to complete a design
  • Automatic visual documentation of design workflow IPs into re-executable assets for design reviews and collaboration.
• Workflow usability enhancements- variable sets, performance CSV import/export.
  • Variable sets save design parameters representing different design scenarios and process corners, enabling traceable and reproducible settings during design space exploration.
  • Performance specs have in-line syntax validation, with CSV import/export to streamline complex simulation and optimization setup.
• Import ADS schematics and other cellviews
  • Simplifies reuse of prior work and quickly setup new projects.

Figure 2. RF Circuit Simulation Professional UI organizes simulation and optimization control as workflows instead of disjointed tasks to closely capture the designer’s thought process in producing a design.

Figure 3. Nexus Connect enables you to define a visual and executable flowchart that also automatically documents simulations, optimization, and intermediate design decisions as Python scripts in your design flow for review, reuse, and collaboration.

Multi-Performance Parallel Optimization Algorithms

• Unlike traditional circuit optimizers, advanced RF Circuit Simulation Professional optimization algorithms operate on challenging designs with large-scale variable counts, such as RFICs and 3DHI transceiver modules.
• Optimization workflow control replaces disjointed optimization tasks by enabling conditional branching and sequencing of different design sections to be optimized in turn.
• Advanced optimization algorithms converge up to 30x faster while avoiding local minima traps.
• Covariant Matrix Adaptation – Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) adaptive optimizer
  • Robust optimizer that evolves candidate solutions and automatically adapts search distribution, direction, and step-sizes accordingly.
  • For highly nonlinear and complex RF problems with noisy evaluations, many local optima, and mixed constraints. 
• Parallel optimization with high-performance computing (HPC) clusters allows RF Circuit Simulation Professional to accelerate convergence by up to 16x.
• External Python-based optimization algorithms can also be used in RF Circuit Simulation Professional to supplement the already powerful native optimizers.
• Common Open Access (OA) database enables RFICs designed in Virtuoso or Custom Compiler to be optimized together with off-chip packaging or in 3DHI module using RF Circuit Simulation Professional and RFPro in ADS (see Figure 6).

Figure 6. Optimize RFIC designed in Virtuoso or Custom Compiler together with off-chip 3DHI packaging and integration inside Keysight ADS.

Cost-Effective Token-Based Licensing

RF Circuit Simulation Professional simulators are supported by the world’s leading RF foundries in the provision of Process Design Kits (PDKs) for accurate simulation and corner analysis before tape out. The broad support by RFIC foundries for RF Circuit Simulation Professional offers a wide choice of processes for your RFIC design to compete in price performance within tight market windows.

RF Circuit Simulation Professional is cost-effectively purchased as a shared pool of token licenses that are used during simulation or optimization and returned to the pool after a period of inactivity. Parallel simulation and optimization, delivering up to 16x speedup, can be enabled with a larger shared token license pool (see Figure 8).

A prerequisite design environment from the 3 listed below is needed by RF Circuit Simulation Professional to run and to manage multiple designs. RF Circuit Simulation Professional runs on the latest versions of Linux and Windows operating systems.

• Prerequisite Design Environment
  • Keysight Advanced Design System 
  • Cadence Virtuoso ADE 
  • Synopsys PrimeWave Custom Compiler
• Faster and shareable token checkout from W5600E bundle
  • The 6 pack tokens in the W5600E bundle can now be shared by multiple users instead of one user checking out 6 tokens at once.
  • Requires a one-time licensing update from previous W5600E installation.

Figure 8. The W5600E RF Circuit Simulation Professional element is the minimum recommended configuration. It contains six W5601E one-pack element licenses. The quantity of licenses can be scaled up to enable parallel simulation and optimization for 16x speedup and thorough simulation coverage before tapeout to eliminate costly respins.