Composite RF tuner models and their object oriented implementation

This paper presents a novel approach to RF tuner modeling, called composite modeling. The RF/analog blocks are composed by analytical models, obtained by selecting, configuring and merging of pre-defined attributes; these attributes are closed-form analytical representations of the analog signal-processing functions (gain, filtering, frequency conversion, etc.) and the non-idealities considered (noise, nonlinearity, carrier frequency offset, I/Q imbalance, etc.). A framework for modeling RF tuners based on object oriented programming was developed using this method. It enables the development of well-structured yet fully scalable and re-configurable models - thus easy to maintain and refine further, by adding new features; also, the class hierarchy for object oriented implementation is given. The usefulness and flexibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated by an example, the modeling and analysis of a DVB-H tuner for both passband and equivalent baseband simulation.