TABLE OF CONTENTS The small-signal frequency-domain network representation of microwave circuit responses meets most RF/microwave circuit designers' needs. The major exception is for large-signal microwave circuits such as power amplifiers, mixers, and oscillators. RF/microwave frequency-domain representations are typically s-parameter-based and can be generated via microwave circuit simulations or s-parameter measurements. However, high-speed digital circuit waveforms are not easily characterized and represented in the frequency domain. Digital circuit designers require signal-integrity parameters associated with these high-speed digital circuits. Digital signals can be comprised of multiple harmonically related frequency components; the fundamental frequency and the odd-order harmonics (ideally, no even-order harmonics) can extend to very high micro-wave frequencies. In communication circuits, encoding information as a digital binary signal on a signal-carrier frequency requires a signal bandwidth spread about the fundamental digital-signal-carrier frequency. Characterization of a high-speed digital network requires the circuit response over all signal frequencies simultaneously. Digital circuits signal transfer can change with time; digital circuits do not have easy-to-analyze linear transfer functions. However, the digital data transmission media between the active digital I/O drivers can be built with linear microwave-transmission circuits. This chapter investigates techniques that can model a time-varying digital transmission through linear microwave-transmission circuits.
In the field of high-speed digital design, input and output time-domain response analysis tools include bit error rate (BER), error vector magnitude (EVM), and eye diagrams described in Chapter 1. These signal-integrity tools process the high-speed nonperiodic digital circuit response in the time-domain into meaningful digital performance parameters.
Time-step nodal analysis and impulse-response convolution are...
