Analysis of programs for calculation of the system characteristics of ultra-wide range receiving paths

Abstract

When designing radio engineering products, at the early stages,one of the most important tasks to be solved is to determine the effective version of the system/device by analyzing all possible available versions. Therefore, the development of such systems / devices is a complex and time-consuming process, which involves an infinitely large number of iterations of calculations and simulations of various options in search of an optimal and efficient one. This article describes the programs: AppCAD from Agilent and ADISimRF from Analog Devices. These programs have a large functionality, a lot of calculated system characteristics of the path, but each of them has shortcomings, for example, the lack of an editable database of integrated circuits (IC), the lack of dynamic range calculations for third-order intermodulation of the receiving path, theinability to optimize for nonlinear distortions, etc.The purpose of the article is to develop an original program for calculating radio receiving paths, which is not inferior in functionality to foreign analogues and has a number of useful refinements for calculations. The article presents formulas forcalculating the noise figure of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and makes a comparative analysis of the resultsobtained with the real value. The noise figure of the radio receiving path is refined by including the reverseloss coefficient and the ADC noise figure in the formula. The program developed by the author of the article hasan editable element base, which simplifies and accelerates the calculation of the device. The algorithm of theprogram developed by the author is described, and the calculation of the system characteristics of the path for comparison with foreign analogues is given.