Spectre RF By Any Other Name ...

It has been a while since I last appended, hope you are well!

It was a little bit difficult to come up with a subject to write about and then recently I was in a meeting where we were talking about transient noise analysis. A designer was discussing the issue of analyzing the noise of a Pipeline ADC as an example of how they use the transient noise. The conversation started me to wondering whether or not this might be a good application for Spectre RF. After all, Spectre RF PNOISE analysis can be used to analyze the noise of Sample and Hold in the Pipeline ADC. Since then I have been spent some time exploring how to use Spectre RF to analyze data conversion circuits. The experience has reminded me of the the versatility of Spectre RF's periodic steady-state and noise analysis in analyzing complex problems. Shown in Figure 1 is an example of the periodic steady-state results for an 8bit current output Digital-to-Analog Converter, DAC. The periodic steady-state analysis results can be used to measure the SFDR and THD for the DAC.

                  Figure 1: PSS Results for an 8-Bit Switched Current DAC

So back to the title, what is in a name? I have been using Spectre RF for more than 10 years and have often used Spectre "RF" for unusual applications, for example, analyzing switched-mode power supply designs. Yet this was first time I have seriously looked at Spectre RF for data converters. I too had fallen into the trap of thinking that Spectre "RF" is for "RF" circuits. In the next append, we will look further into simulating data converters with Spectre RF. In the meantime, it would be good to hear from you, have you ever used Spectre RF for non-RF applications?

Art Shaldenbrand