Circuit-level wireless systems design at microwave frequencies

The paper describes a multi-domain computer-aided design (CAD) platform for the simulation of entire microwave links from the transmitter to the receiver intermediate-frequency (IF) ports. The combination of nonlinear, electromagnetic (EM), and propagation analysis tools provides the level of accuracy usually needed in modern telecommunication systems simulation/design. The circuit-level description of the system blocks and the use of digitally-modulated radio-frequency (RF) drive forces to use state-of-the-art Harmonic Balance (HB) algorithms. The effectiveness of the presented tool is demonstrated by the full CAD-based treatment of highly-complex RF links, including both single-input single-output (SISO) and multi-input multi-output (MIMO) cases.