Transient and Steady-State Analysis of Nonlinear RF and Microwave Circuits

Abstract

This paper offers a review of simulation methods currently available for the transient and steady-state analysis of nonlinear RF and microwave circuits. The most general method continues to be the time-marching approach used in Spice, but more recent methods based on multiple time dimensions are particularly effective for RF and microwave circuits. We derive nodal formulations for the most widely used multiple time dimension methods. We put special emphasis on methods for the analysis of oscillators based in the warped multitime partial differential equations (WaMPDE) approach. Case studies of a Colpitts oscillator and a voltage controlled Clapp-Gouriet oscillator are presented and discussed. The accuracy of the amplitude and phase of these methods is investigated. It is shown that the exploitation of frequency-domain latency reduces the computational effort.