RF/Wireless design freeware

A survey using search of RF/Wireless/MMIC freeware on the web led to a nice harvest of freeware routines that provide useful tools for those of us who may want to use these types of programs. It is well known that a number of EDA companies sell fairly expensive RF/Wireless/MMIC programs. For many designers it may be difficult to buy these because of the cost. For these users the freeware that is available on the web might be a partial solution. The freeware programs are not as beautifully formatted but appear to be reasonably accurate when compared to results provided by the more expensive packages. An ongoing interest for us is to take a look at these freeware programs and assess their usefulness and price/performance ratio. A useful package distributed free by Agilent is the first on our list. It is called "appcad" and may be downloaded free. Apart from the marketing type information in this package a number of useful tools are included. It certainly deserves a close look.