Patent ID: 7954079

Claim:
A method of compensating performance degradation of a radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) using an EM (electromagnetic) simulation, the method comprising the steps of: (a) extracting design specifications of the RFIC, and designing and simulating a circuit based upon the extracted design specifications; (b) designing a layout of the designed and simulated circuit, and extracting layout parameters from the designed layout; (c) simplifying the layout and performing an EM simulation to extract performance parameters, wherein simplifying the layout includes replacing circuit elements with a simplified equivalent circuit or elements; (d) performing a circuit simulation using the extracted layout parameters and performance parameters; (e) determining whether results of the circuit simulation satisfy the design specifications of the RFIC; and (f) when the results of the circuit simulation of step (d) do not satisfy the design specifications of the RFIC, partially removing the layout, and carrying out the EM simulation to determine, and then compensate for, a performance degradation region; wherein step (f) includes the steps of: (f-1) dividing the layout into a plurality of regions; (f-2) removing any one region selected from the divided layout, and carrying out the EM simulation and performance parameter extraction; (f-3) determining whether the EM simulation is carried out on all the regions; (f-4) when it is determined that the EM simulation is carried out on all the regions, determining and analyzing the performance degradation region of the layout, including comparing the performance parameters extracted during the EM simulation of step (c) with the performance parameters extracted during the EM simulation of step (f-2); and (f-5) inserting a compensation pattern into the analyzed performance degradation region; and wherein the analyzing of the performance degradation region at step (f-4) includes measuring gains of the circuit and then comparing the gains.