As AI systems push data speeds higher, engineers are facing a simulation problem — and a new tool aims to solve it in one workflow.
Keysight Technologies has added an Electrical-Optical-Electrical (EOE) simulation capability to ADS 2026, allowing engineers to model signal chains — from electrical transmitters to optical links and back to electrical receivers — within a single environment. The update targets AI infrastructure and high-performance computing systems, where optical interconnects are becoming a larger part of data transfer architectures.
In existing workflows, engineers often use separate tools for electrical and photonic simulations and manually combine the results to evaluate system behavior. This process can increase development time and make it harder to identify issues that appear only when both domains are modeled together.
ADS 2026 combines Keysight’s High Speed Digital workflow with its Photonic Designer technology to simulate the full EOE path before hardware implementation. The platform is designed to help engineers evaluate signal integrity, architecture decisions, and electrical-optical tradeoffs earlier in the design process.
The software includes support for full-duplex optical simulation, allowing forward and backward signal propagation to be modeled within the same EOE channel. It also supports wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), enabling engineers to analyze nonlinear effects across multiple wavelengths used in 800G and 1.6T optical links.
Noise modeling spans both electrical and optical domains simultaneously, allowing engineers to assess signal quality across the full system. The platform can also model modulator bias-dependent and large-signal nonlinear effects before hardware production.
ADS 2026 also includes photonic IC support through PDK-based circuit workflows and integration with Keysight RSoft at the component level. The integration is intended to align system simulations more closely with chip-level behavior as photonic integration expands in AI and networking systems.
Niels Fache, Senior Vice President, Keysight, said, “AI infrastructure depends on 800 Gbps and 1.6 Tbps optical links to move data at scale. At these speeds, electrical and optical performance can no longer be modeled separately. With ADS 2026, engineering teams now have the ability to simulate those interactions before committing to silicon.”
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