The company was founded in 1994 by Joseph E. Pekarek, Ted A. Miracco, Stephen A. Maas and Paul Cameron, from Hughes Aircraft, in Fullerton, California. First established as Applied Wave Research, AWR was founded to improve the design efficiency for radio frequency and microwave circuit and system design. The vision of the company was to provide a modern object-oriented electronic design automation environment that could streamline high frequency electronic design by integrating schematic entry and layout; electromagnetic (EM) and circuit theory; and frequency and time-domain methods.
