Overview on System Level Simulation Environment for Characterization, Modeling and Simulation of RF and Microwave devices

This paper presents an overview of research activities on system level design characterization and analysis for RF and microwave devices. The strategy consists on the use of a development platform for both simulation and instrumentation. The kernel of this platform was developed under Scilab/Scicos environment. This open-source development tool drives both instrumentation and simulation algorithms. The measurement setup, interfaced within Scilab and dedicated to the system level analysis will be described. Some measurement based models, extracted from this characterization setup, and recent advanced in system level simulation with Scicos will be also presented. The use of Scilab/Scicos for both characterization and simulation enables an "hardware in the loop" in system level simulations in order to allow an high flexibility for device characterization and modeling processes