Keysight Technologies launches new RF Circuit Simulation feature
Keysight Technologies Inc. has seen its stock price decline as it hits a 20-day low amid mixed market conditions.
The company recently introduced a new capability within its RF Circuit Simulation Professional software, which allows engineers to capture their design processes on an executable whiteboard, generating editable Python code. This innovation aims to enhance design efficiency and address the talent shortage in the semiconductor industry, which is projected to need 88,000 engineers by 2029. The new feature is expected to significantly improve workflow automation and decision-making processes for design teams.
This development positions Keysight favorably in the competitive RF design market, potentially attracting more clients and improving its long-term growth prospects.
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- Circuit Design Optimization: Keysight Technologies announced support for GlobalFoundries' silicon photonics process technology in its Advanced Design System (ADS) Photonic Designer, enabling designers to transition from photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design to full electro-optical-electrical (EOE) system simulation within a single environment, thereby enhancing design efficiency and reducing development risks.
- Simplified Performance Validation: By connecting PIC design with system-level EOE simulation, engineers can validate photonic circuit optical link behavior, including eye diagram analysis and signal integrity metrics, without switching tools, ensuring that designs meet expected performance before production.
- Accelerated Development Cycle: Keysight's physics-based models aligned with GF's silicon photonics process are ready for immediate use, allowing teams to start working without the need to build or calibrate component libraries from scratch, thus shortening time to first design and improving market responsiveness.
- Early System-Level Insights: By evaluating how PIC performance affects optical link early in architecture development, engineers can reduce design iterations and accelerate time to market, further enhancing the company's competitiveness in high-speed optical interconnect architecture development.
- Enhanced Signal Capture: The Pro XA6 SA6320A signal analyzer from Keysight features an analysis bandwidth of up to 8 GHz, enabling broader signal capture that simplifies workflows and accelerates the design and validation of wireless systems.
- Support for High-Frequency Design: With frequency coverage extending to 67 GHz, this device is tailored for next-generation wireless, millimeter-wave, and radar applications, significantly improving signal clarity and measurement accuracy, thus aiding engineers in quickly identifying signal impairments.
- Accelerated 5G NR Analysis: The GPU-accelerated demodulation speeds of the Pro XA6 SA6320A shorten the analysis time for wideband 5G NR error vector magnitude (EVM) measurements, enhancing the efficiency of engineering teams.
- Streamlined Validation Processes: The Expert XA5 SA6210A signal analyzer employs a dual-receiver architecture to support 5G NR and WLAN MIMO measurements, enabling faster single-instrument analysis of complex RF interactions, thereby increasing measurement confidence.
- Collaboration Background: Keysight Technologies is collaborating with NTT DOCOMO and NTT under a memorandum of understanding to accelerate the development of 6G wireless communication design, testing, and measurement technologies, enhancing the evaluation and validation of next-generation wireless architectures.
- Technical Progress: The companies have made initial strides in measurement-driven channel modeling and distributed Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) simulation, enabling researchers to evaluate wireless system performance in complex environments with greater confidence.
- Realistic Simulation: Keysight and DOCOMO are refining channel models using real-world radio propagation measurements to better simulate complex wireless conditions in laboratory settings, thereby improving the repeatability and scalability of 6G architecture evaluations.
- Industry Impact: This collaboration not only helps reduce the risks associated with transitioning from research to deployment but also provides a more reliable validation foundation for innovation within the 6G ecosystem, with initial results expected to be presented at the EuCNC & 6G Summit 2026 in Malaga, Spain.
- Compliance Risk Reduction: Keysight's achievement of DEKRA's EN 18052:2025 certification empowers automakers to mitigate compliance risks amidst evolving safety regulations, thereby accelerating the time-to-market for next-generation connected vehicles.
- Integration Optimization: The certification validates Keysight's Hybrid eCall solution's reliability across mixed network environments, enabling vehicles to dynamically switch based on real-world network availability, enhancing operational capabilities in diverse conditions.
- Critical Testing Scenarios: The certification covers essential scenarios such as emergency call setup, Minimum Set of Data (MSD) transmission, and voice communication, ensuring connection stability and data accuracy under realistic network conditions, thus improving emergency response efficiency.
- Strengthened Industry Leadership: Keysight will showcase its testing leadership at the ETSI NG-eCall Plugtests™ 2026, further solidifying its role as a technology partner in automotive emergency communications through collaboration with manufacturers and emergency service stakeholders.
- Design Process Capture: Keysight Technologies has launched a new capability within its RF Circuit Simulation Professional software that allows engineers to capture their design processes on an executable whiteboard, generating editable Python code that enhances design efficiency by making design decisions, simulations, and optimizations reusable.
- Addressing Talent Shortage: According to McKinsey, the semiconductor industry will require 88,000 engineers by 2029, with RF design facing an even more acute talent gap; this software helps retain and transfer critical design knowledge, mitigating the impact of senior engineer turnover on the industry.
- Workflow Automation: The new feature supports decision loops and parameter settings, enabling design teams to construct workflows visually and automatically execute simulations and design decisions, significantly reducing the manual setup time required for each iteration and improving overall workflow efficiency.
- AI-Driven Design Transformation: Keysight's EDA General Manager Nilesh Kamdar stated that the structured data and Python APIs generated by this software represent the first step towards fully automated and AI/ML-driven RF design, marking a significant advancement in the industry's shift towards intelligent design practices.
- Key Technology Highlights: At the 2026 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium, Keysight will showcase solutions that help engineers accelerate spectrum utilization by addressing complex RF design and validation challenges, which is expected to enhance client design efficiency in wireless, aerospace, and 6G applications.
- AI-Driven Design Optimization: By demonstrating AI-driven workflows, Keysight will illustrate how to automate RF design tasks and accelerate optimization processes, thereby reducing development risks and improving design reuse, enabling engineers to transition faster from concept to deployment.
- Complex RF System Validation: Keysight will showcase high-fidelity signal generation technology that supports rapid validation for 5G and 6G applications, ensuring reliability in increasingly complex RF architectures, further solidifying its market leadership.
- Expert Technical Talks: During the symposium, Keysight experts will conduct multiple technical presentations covering calibration and measurement methods for phased array antennas, as well as the impact of quantum computing on the RF electronics supply chain, showcasing the company's deep expertise and industry insights in cutting-edge technologies.






