Analysis of the frequency conversion of spurious tones in frequency dividers and development of an event-driven model for system simulations

Abstract

This paper presents a frequency domain analysis of spurious tones in frequency dividers. The results of the analysis are used to develop an event-driven model for system simulations which work entirely in the frequency domain. The proposed approach is able to provide a fast and accurate model in a SystemVerilog/C++ environment which takes the frequency conversion effects of the spurious tones into account. A virtual prototype which includes the model was simulated and due to the fast simulation speed it was possible to determine the influence of spurious tones on the bit error rate in a complex receive scenario.