Computer‐aided analysis of near‐carrier noise in RF–microwave frequency converters

The paper presents for the first time a rigorous nonlinear analysis of near-carrier noise in a frequency converter consisting of a noisy nonlinear circuit driven by noisy sinusoidal source(s). The problem being tackled is the evaluation of the phase and amplitude noise of the up- or down-converted signal starting from the knowledge of the circuit topology, of noisy models for the nonlinear devices, and of the statistical properties of the noisy forcing source(s). Two mixer models of different complexities are treated in depth, i.e., the case of an ideally buffered local oscillator (LO), and the case of a real LO fully described by its circuit topology. In both cases a correct evaluation of the near-carrier noise is shown to require a perturbative analysis of the noiseless quasiperiodic steady state generated by the intermodulation of the local oscillation with the RF signal. ©1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 9: 449–467, 1999

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