Hi,
    I am working on Down conversion Passive Mixer and want to know the right way to simulate the voltage conversion gain of it. I read the cadence manual and it describes about the PSS and PXF or PAC to simulate the conversion gain. However, somebody told me to use only PSS analysis. What is the right way to simulate this?

Best regards,

blilix wrote on Aug 2^nd, 2006, 12:23pm:


PSS+Pxf and PSS+Pac will give you the small signal gain under frequency translation of the Large LO tone.

using straight PSS to get the gain will mean the RF input is no longer a small signal input, but if its within the linear region of operation of operation of the mixer it will give the same result as PSS+Pxf or PSS+Pac, much in the same way as a transient simulation would. Of course there is a compuational overhead for doing two tone (RF &LO) PSS or transient in comparison to PSS+PAc or PSS+Pxf, especially if the down converted IF is much lower frequency than that of the LO....

To capture compression effects on gain due to large RF inputs, then PSS, transient or QPSS (the results of each should be similar) would be more appropriate than small signal analyses pac or pxf.

hope this helps...