Simultaneous thermal and electrical analysis of nonlinear microwave circuits

A software tool for the simultaneous determination of the thermal and electrical steady-state regimes of nonlinear microwave circuits containing temperature-dependent active devices is introduced. The analysis technique is an extension of the classic piecewise harmonic-balance method, and is quite general-purpose. It can be applied to networks operating under multiple-tone excitation, including pulsed-RF regimes. The simulation problem is reduced to a nonlinear algebraic system whose unknowns are electrical and thermal state-variable harmonics. Advanced numerical techniques are used to overcome the difficulties arising from the high degree of nonlinearity and from the very large number of unknowns of the numerical problem. The program incorporates a facility for the evaluation of the thermal constants of multiple finger planar devices starting from geometrical data.<>