Intermodulation products for a mixer subjected to a multi-carrier signal

Applying a multi-carrier signal to a mixer leads to a large range of intermodulation products. To perform a link budget of a multi-carrier transmitreceive system, it is important to predict the location and magnitude of those intermodulation products. To achieve this, several methods, including Volterra series and harmonic balance, have been used. The harmonic balance method has been incorporated in microwave circuit simulators, but fails to give accurate results when dealing with a large number of carriers. This article shows how a transient simulation can be set-up to predict the behavior of the intermodulation products in a multi-carrier environment using a mixer nonlinear model.