Efficient Frequency Domain Analysis of Large

Nonlinear Analog Circuits

Peter Feldmann Bob Melville David Long
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Murray Hill, NJ 07974

Abstract-In this paper, we present a new implementation
of the harmonic balance method which extends its applica-
bility to circuits 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than was
previously practical. The results reported here extend our
previous work [l]which only considered large circuits oper-
ating in a mildly nonlinear regime. The new implementation
is based on quadratically convergent Newton methods and
is able to simulate general nonlinear circuits. The signif-
icant efficiency improvement is achieved by use of Krylov
subspace methods and a problem-specific preconditioner for
inverting the harmonic balance Jacobian matrix. The anal-
ysis of radio-frequency mixers, implemented in integrated
circuit technology, is an important application of our new
method. We describe the theory behind the method, then
report performance results on a complete receiver design
using detailed transistor models.
I. INTRODUCTION
The method of H a r m o n i c Balance is well established for
fast and accurate steady-state analysis of nonlinear circuits,
especially when driven by two or more periodic inputs at
widely separated frequencies [2,3,4]. Unlike conventional
transient analysis, the computer time required for a har-
monic‘balance analysis is almost insensitive to the numeric
values of the stimuli frequencies. The gist of the harmonic
balance method is t o express each of the n circuit wave-
forms as a Fourier series truncated to N coefficients, then
replace the circuit’s differential equations by a system of
nonlinear algebraic equations involving the Fourier coeffi-
cients. This is possible because the derivative with respect
t o time of a Fourier series is just an algebraic operation. A
numerical technique, such as Newton’s method, is then em-
ployed to solve the resulting system of nonlinear equations.
This approach is especially intuitive for radio-frequency de-
signers because of the natural connection t o spectrum an-
alyzer measurements.
As stated above, we use n t o denote the number of wave-
forms which must be stored to capture the behavior of
the circuit. Even a medium-sized IC can have hundreds
of nodes, especially if a sophisticated transistor model is
used. The transform dimension N can also become large
in the case of a multi-tone analysis. For the simulation
of a mixer, for example, the designer might request 16
harmonics of the local oscillator and 8 harmonics of the
signal frequency. Because two real numbers are needed
to capture the amplitude and phase of each spectral com-
ponent, the final transform dimension is on the order of
N = 2 x 8 x 16 = 256. Note that the overall dimesion
of the system of harmonic balance equations is n N , which
can become quite large in practical examples (over 800,000
for the circuit example in the results section). Letting X
denote the aggregrate vector of all unknown Fourier coef-
ficients, the harmonic balance equations are written as a
system H ( X ) = 0 of size n N .
The preferred methods for solving harmonic balance
equations are Newton-based techniques [13] because of
their fast convergence and high accuracy. However, most
implementations of this approach require the Jacobian ma-
drix d H / d X which is of dimension n N and much more
dense than conventional matrices which arise in numerical
circuit simulation. Hence, inversion of this matrix becomes
a computational bottleneck and is largely responsible for
the limitation of harmonic balance techniques to relatively
small examples.
The technical contribution of our paper is a method for
fast exact inversion of the harmonic balance Jacobian ma-
trix using preconditioned Krylov subspace algorithms. Be-
fore going into details, it might be worthwhile to motivate
the need for exact inversion, especially since methods have
been proposed for solving the harmonic balance equations
using approximate inversions of the Jacobian matrix[G], or
even not using this matrix a t all[5]:
Newton’s method with accurate Jacobian matrix in-
version exhibits local quadratic convergence, i.e, a so-
lution to the harmonic balance system can be obtained
t o machine precision in a fixed, small number of itera-
tions. Thus, the overall solution time would be small
if the inversion could be done efficiently.
0 Widely convergent continuation methods[7] for solving
the harmonic balance equations also require solving
linear systems involving B H / d X as a sub-matrix.
t The inverted matrix can be interpreted as a lineariza-
tion of the circuit in a small-signal sense, which can
then be used for sensitivity computation [9] and noise
analysis [SI.
Hence, we see fast accurate inversion of the Jacobian matrix
as a key enabling technology for progress in this area. Re-
cent work by Rizzoli at al. [lo] also emphasizes the need for
accurate Jacobian matrix inversion and attacks the prob-
lem using hierarchical decomposition.
1I. THEORETICA L C 0 N S ID ERATIO N S
The most general form of circuit equations, resulting
from one of the known formulations, e.g., MNA [12], is

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 t m m
Fig. 1. Significant frequencies: (a) one-tone, (b) two-tone
This is a system of n equations where x ( t ) is an n-vector of
circuit variables (currents, voltages, charges, and fluxes).
The first term represents the contribution of distributed
elements expressed using Green functions; $ q ( z ( t ) ) repre-
sents the contribution of reactive circuit components, such
as capacitors, inductors, etc.; and f ( z ( t ) ) represents the
contribution of non-reactive circuit components, such as
resistors. Semiconductor devices such as diodes and tran-
sistors contribute to both of the last two terms. Finally, b ( t )
is the excitation term due to independent sources, which,
in our case, are sinusoidal of one or more incommensurate
frequencies (tones)
P
In the absence of chaos, the response of most practical
circuits has a discrete spectrum with components at integer
combinations of the excitation frequencies,
Circuits that oscillate will generate, in addition, compo-
nents at other frequencies. The methods presented in this
paper assume response spectra at combinations of the ex-
citation frequencies but can be extended to handle oscil-
lation. Due to the attenuation of the high frequencies in
practical circuits we can further assume that only a finite
subset of the frequency components is significant
For the case of a one-tone analysis the subset of significant
frequencies consists of a DC coinponent, the fundamen-
tal frequency and a number of harmonics. For a two-tone
analysis the subset contains the DC component, the two
fundamental frequencies, and a number of harmonics and
intermodulation products, as illustrated in Figure 1. Sub-
sets for three or more tones are similar. Thus, the response
of the circuit is defined by the N coefficients corresponding
to each of the n circuit variables
N-1
k=O
We apply the Fourier transform to the circuit equa-
tions (1). The time-domain convolution is mapped into
a frequency-domain product, and we obtain
+
Y ( w ) X ( w ) jwQ(w) + F(u) - B(u) = 0
462
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where Y ( u ) ,X(w), F ( w ) , & ( U ) , and B(w) are Fourier
transforms of the time domain functions y(t), z ( t ) >f(x(t)),
q ( x ( t ) ) , and b ( t ) respectively. The n N equations, necessary
to determine n N coefficients, are obtained by forcing the
system of R functional equations (6) t o hold at the N fre-
quency points of interest
Y(wo)Xo + jwoQ(wo) + F ( w o ) - B ( w o ) = 0 (7)
Y(wi)Xi + j w i Q ( ~ i )+ F ( w i ) - B ( w i ) = 0
For notational simplicity, we assume that (1) consists of a
single equation. The nonlinear functions F and Q depend
on the frequency coefficients [XO, . . . , X N - ~ ] ~We . illus-
trate the dependence for F . Starting from the frequency
coefficients [ X o ,. . . , X N - ~ ]we~ ,transform to the time do-
main and obtain a sample of circuit variables a t different
time points [ ~ ( t l.). ,. , z ( t ~ - 1 ) ] ~We . evaluate the func-
tion f for each time point [ f ( z ( t l ) ) ,. . . , f ( z ( t ~ - l ) ) ]and
~
transform the results back to frequency domain. In matrix
notation we have
where l? represents the time-to-frequency-domain trans-
form and the diagonal "matrix" denotes the application
of a nonlinear operator. For the one-tone case, both the
frequency-domain and time-domain samples are equally
spaced and time-to-frequency and frequency-to-time trans-
forms are just the D F T and IDFT computed using the
efficient FFT algorithm. The use of the FFT can be ex-
tended to the multitone case (unevenly spaced frequencies),
through appropriate selection of time-points [a].
The discretized system of circuit equations (7) becomes
(9)
or more compactly
YX + Rrq(.)rlx+ rf(.)r-lx- B = 0. (io)
Here t,he diagonal matrix 2
! represenk the frequency-
d o m a i n differentiation o p e r a t o r . We have j u s t obtained
the harmonic balance system of equations H ( X ) = 0. For
a system of n circuit equations, additional permutation op-
erators need to be inserted to insure the required order of
the vectors for the various operators.
Using Newton's method to solve H ( X ) = 0 requires a
linear solve with the Jacobian matrix I = d H / d X at each
iteration. The Jacobian matrix of (9) is
(6)
21.6.2
 HarmonicBalance Mabrix
Fig. 2. Structure of the Jacobian matrix
where C and G are diagonal (block-diagonal in general)
matrices, with the diagonal elements representing circuit
linearizations at the sampled time points
Naive Jacobian matrix evaluation results in a large, ( n N x
n N ) , and dense matrix, which is illustrated in Figure 2.
Direct factorization or even storage of such a matrix would
overwhelm any computer even for medium sized circuit.
Iterative methods are the only hope to solve such linear
dystems. Krylov subspace based iterative methods such as
QMR [ll]are particlarly suited for this problem since they
derive all matrix information solely from products of the
matrix with vectors. It is easy to see from the expression
JZ = Y Z + a r m - 9 + r G r - 9
that such matrix-vector products can be computed very
efficiently, without ever forming the matrix - only through
multiplications with sparse matrices and FFTs.
Unfortunately iterative linear solvers and Krylov sub-
space methods in particular, do not converge reliably.
Convergence is achieved through preconditioning, i.e., sys-
tem J Z = W is replaced with the preconditioned system
J - l J Z = J”-’W, which has, the same solution. For ro-
bust and efficient convergence, the preconditioner matrix
J” should be, in some sense, a good approximation of J ,
and also “easy” to invert. In the remainder of this sec-
tion we describe a preconditioning method specific to the
structure of the harmonic balance Jacobian matrix. Be-
ing problem specific, it is superior t o any general purpose
preconditioning technique.
The terms that introduce dense blocks in the Jacobian
matrix are I’Cr-l and I’GJ?’. They result in circulant
(block-circulant) matrices [14]. We analyze the first one
= circulant (Cl, . . . , C N )
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140, d
Fig. 3. Magnitudes of circulant matrix entries
where [Cl ... C N ] is ~ the I)FT of [c1 . . . C N ] ~ If.
the circuit is linear, the elements c1, . . . , CN on the diag-
onal of C are all identical - the linearization of a linear
circuit does not vary. In this case only C1 is nonzero and
equal to the diagonal elements. The analysis of the term
containing G is similar. The Jacobian matrix for a linear
circuit becomes diagonal (block-diagonal)
Jlin =
[
Y(w0) +6 +jwoc
y((JN-1) + +jwN-1c
] (15)
and, therefore, easy to invert.
When the circuit is nonlinear the circulant matrix fills
up. However, as shown in Figure 3, the strongest entries
(13)
in the matrix (in this case comming from a simple mixer)
are concentrated on the diagonal. We can still set elements
c2, . . . CN-1 and 6 2 , . . . 6 ~ - 1to zero and use the result-
ing diagonal matrix & a preconditioner. In this case the
diagonal elemenk C1 and represent the average of the
circuit linearizations a t all time-points. If the circuit is
“mildly” nonlinear this diagonal matrix is a good approx-
imation of the Jacobian matrix and serves as an effective
preconditioner. When stronger nonlinearities exist in the
circuit, some off-diagonal elements of the circulant matri-
ces must also be included in the preconditioner. In this
case, the Jacobian matrix approximation loses its diagonal
structure but remains much sparser than the original Jaco-
bian matrix and, therefore, within the capabilities of direct
factorization algorithms.
111. RESULTS
As an example, we describe a variety of simulations on
the front-end for a 900 MHz integrated direct conversion re-
ceiver. The circuit consists of a low-noise amplifier (LNA)
driving I and Q mixers. It has 27 bipolar transistors, plus
a variety of linear devices. The steady-state solution is de-
scribed by just over 300 waveforms, many of which are for
internal nodes of the detailed transistor model that was
used. One-tone simulations of the LNA alone were used to
measure gain and the 1dB compression point. Local oscil-
lator (LO) feedthrough from the mixers back into the LNA
463
 TABLE I
SUMMARY
OF SIMULATIONS

-
Circuit -n Transform I Unknowns I Purpose Time
LNA 223 lT, N = 3 669 LNA gain 10s
LNA 223 lT, N = 35 7,805 Compression point lm30s
LNA 223 2T, N = 175 39,025 Intermodulation lm30s
LNA+mixer 317 lT, N = 63 19,971 LO feed-through 15m/2m30s

,
LNASmixer 317 2T, N = 175 55,475 Conversion gain 20m/5m
LNASmixer 317 3T, N = 2,025 641,925 Desensitization 3h
LNA+mixer 317 3T, N = 2,625 832,125 Intermodulation lh40m

was also measured with one-tone simulations. For the lat-

.. . ..
ter, we raised the LO amplitude in steps in order to keep -20 ..,...
the Newton loop under control. Once the LO was being -40
driven with the desired amplitude, we captured the solu- -60
tion and used it as an starting point for subsequent runs. -80 .. .. ... ...
This allowed us to change component values and quickly -100 .. .. ..
resimulate in order t o explore design alternatives. Informa- -120 .. ..
.. ..
tion from the LO feedthrough simulations was used in de-
signing the single-ended to differential conversion circuitry
zx:;?- N;
between the LNA and the mixers. MHz GHz

Two-tone simulations were used to measure intermodu-
lation in the LNA alone, and conversion gain in the full
circuit. As in the LO feedthrough simulation, for the con-
version gain tests we captured the solution from the initial
run and used it to speed subsequent tests for a number of
slightly different circuits.
The most demanding simulation was a blocking test.
The LNA input network was driven with an RF signal at
-98dBm and with a blocking signal 3MHz away a t -23dBm.
A third frequency was needed for the LO, bringing the to-
tal transform size t o over 2,000 and the total number of
unknowns to over 600,000! A transform of this size was
needed because the strong blocker and LO signals required
many harmonics to prevent aliasing. The simulation re-
quired three hours on an SGI system (150MHz R4400).
Figure 4 shows one of the outputs of the front-end. The
designers were very interested in seeing how much the con-
version gain was reduced in the presence of the blocker.
Because of the large range of frequencies, it was estimated
that getting this information using transient analysis would
have required about one week of CPU time. Table I sum-
marizes performance data for these simulations.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper presents a new harmonic balance algorithm
capable of solving problems 2-3 orders of magnitude larger
than its predecessors. The efficiency gain is due to (1) the
decomposition of the large and dense Jacobian matrix into
a number of inexpensive-to-apply linear operators, and (2)
use of an iterative linear solver which exploits the decom-
position and avoids the storage and factorization of the
Jacobian matrix. The convergence of the linear solver is
ensured by a problem specific preconditioner rooted in en-
gineering intuition.
Fig. 4. Receiver front-end output spectrum
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