Section: Software

Dedale-HF

Participant : Fabien Seyfert [corresponding participant] .

Status: Currently under development. A stable version is maintained.

Dedale-HF is a software dedicated to solve exhaustively the coupling matrix synthesis problem in reasonable time for the users of the filtering community. For a given coupling topology, the coupling matrix synthesis problem (C.M. problem for short) consists in finding all possible electromagnetic coupling values between resonators that yield a realization of given filter characteristics (see section  6.3 ). Solving the latter problem is crucial during the design step of a filter in order to derive its physical dimensions as well as during the tuning process where coupling values need to be extracted from frequency measurements (see Figure 3 ).

Figure 3. Overall scheme of the design and tuning process of a microwave filter.

Dedale-HF consists in two parts: a database of coupling topologies as well as a dedicated predictor-corrector code. Roughly speaking each reference file of the database contains, for a given coupling topology, the complete solution to the C.M. problem associated to particular filtering characteristics. The latter is then used as a starting point for a predictor-corrector integration method that computes the solution to the C.M. problem of the user, i.e. the one corresponding to user-specified filter characteristics. The reference files are computed off-line using Groebner basis techniques or numerical techniques based on the exploration of a monodromy group. The use of such a continuation technique combined with an efficient implementation of the integrator produces a drastic reduction, by a factor of 20, of the computational time.

Access to the database and integrator code is done via the web on http://www-sop.inria.fr/apics/Dedale/WebPages . The software is free of charge for academic research purposes: a registration is however needed in order to access full functionality. Up to now 90 users have registered world wide (mainly: Europe, U.S.A, Canada and China) and 4000 reference files have been downloaded.

A license of this software has been sold end 2011, to TAS-Espagna to tune filter, with topologies with multiple solutions. The usage of Dedale-HF is here considered together with Presto-HF.