Overview

Wcalc is a tool for the analysis and synthesis of transmission line structures and related components. Wcalc provides the ability to analyze the electrical parameters of a particular structure based on the physical dimensions and material parameters. The synthesis portion calculates the required physical parameters to meet desired electrical specifications. Wcalc includes several models and places an emphasis on accuracy. Several frontends provide the user with several options for its use.

History

Work on Wcalc was started in 1997 as part of a RF and microwave filter design toolkit. During the initial work on that program (no the filter toolkit is not currently available), it quickly became apparent that an essential piece of that tool was a microstrip transmission line synthesis routine. Considerable time was spent researching the available approximations for microstrip analysis with the goal of implementing the most accurate approximations. The result of that early work was a JavaScript based analysis/synthesis tool. The JavaScript based tool is still available under the name mcalc.

Some of the lessons learned when writing mcalc are: I don't like programming in JavaScript, sometimes I don't have access to a JavaScript enabled web browser at the computer I'm in front of (at least I didn't in 1997, now in 2009 that is no longer an issue), and sometimes the simple calculator based frontend to the numerical routines is simply not enough. These considerations led to the decision to create a tool with the flexibility to support several frontends in a way that makes the addition of new models relatively straightforward.

Frontends

At this time, Wcalc includes 6 frontends to the numerical routines. A CGI interface provides a simple way to provide, for example, company-wide access to the calculators via an intranet. The GTK+ based graphical user interface is the standard standalone version of Wcalc. Through the mex interface, users can use Scilab, Octave, or Matlab for a high powered programming interface to Wcalc. Finally, a minimal standard input/output interface provides a means for interfacing to 3rd party tools which support inter-process communication (IPC).