What's New in Sonnet Lite & LitePlus

Sonnet Suite - What's New

Sonnet User’s Manuals are only updated with each full release. However, our online help is also available at our web site and will periodically be updated with new material. To access this help, go to www.sonnetsoftware.com/support  and click on the ”Knowledge Base” link for the most recent updates.

For a complete list of the restrictions on Sonnet Lite and Sonnet LitePlus, please see Sonnet Lite & LitePlus Restrictions.

NOTE: You can analyze 40% larger circuits than in previous releases because the Symmetric Matrix Solver is now available for all Sonnet products. This change affects Sonnet Lite, Sonnet LitePlus, Level2 and Level3 suites.

New Features

Below is a summation of the major new features in release 11 of Sonnet Lite and Sonnet LitePlus. See below for more details.

Components: The ”Component,” a new object in Sonnet, is introduced in this release.  A Component is used to include an electrical or circuit theory model into your electromagnetic simulation.  The electrical model may be an ideal component (such as an ideal capacitor), or a data model component (such as a vendor S-parameter model for a surface mount transistor or amplifier).  The EM analysis engine, em, uses circuit theory to attach the specified component to your geometry for the simulation, or creates ports which may be connected in a circuit simulation tool.  Components are based on a new de-embedding technology used for co-calibrated ports .For Sonnet Lite and LitePlus, you are limited to three components all of the Ideal Component type. For more information on Components, see Components.

There is also a chapter on Components in the Sonnet User's Guide.

New Agilent Interface: In this release we introduce a new Agilent ADS Interface which enables you to setup and run your simulations all without leaving the ADS environment, and provides an intuitive, easy-to-use GUI interface.  Existing layout projects in ADS can be used to instantly create accompanying Sonnet projects, including Momentum project information.  Sonnet extraction models created during EM simulation are automatically imported into ADS, along with a schematic ”layout look-alike” symbol and accompanying model layout.  Sonnet models may also incorporate the new Co-Calibrated Ports or Components features. The interface in Sonnet Lite and Sonnet LitePlus are subject to translating only projects which do not exceed the Lite and LitePlus restrictions. For more information on the Agilent Interface, see the Translators manual available in PDF format through the Sonnet task bar.

Markers in the Response Viewer: This release introduces Markers, a new feature in the response viewer. Markers allow you to annotate a plot in the response viewer to help you more easily interpret your data and more clearly present your data to others. Markers are available under the Graph Menu in the response viewer main menu. There are six types of markers: Data, Curve, Vertical Line, Horizontal Line, Delta and Note. For details, see Graph => Marker.

Symmetric Matrix Solver: Sonnet Lite and LitePlus now use the same symmetric matrix solver used by Sonnet Professional. This effectively increases the size of the project which can be analyzed using Sonnet Lite or LitePlus by about 40%.