VCA_Setup (Voltage Controlled Amplifier Setup)
Symbol
Available in ADS
Parameters
Name |
Description |
Units |
Default |
|---|---|---|---|
Freq |
Fundamental frequency; must be a non-negative real number |
GHz |
1.0 |
Order |
Order for Harmonic Balance simulation inside extractor; must be an integer greater than 0 |
None |
10 |
Pin_Start |
Start value for sweep of large-signal input power; must be a real number |
dBm |
−50.0 |
Pin_Stop |
Stop value for sweep of large-signal input power; must be a real number |
dBm |
20.0 |
Pin_Step |
Interval for linear sweep of large-signal input power; must be a positive real number |
dB |
10.0 |
Vcontrol_Start |
Start value for sweep of control voltage; must be a real number |
V |
0.0 |
Vcontrol_Stop |
Stop value for sweep of control voltage; must be a real number |
V |
1.0 |
Vcontrol_Step |
Interval for linear sweep of control voltage; must be a real number |
V |
0.1 |
Notes/Equations
- VCA_Setup performs a swept control voltage and swept input power simulation of a circuit-level VCA and generates a dataset for subsequent use by the data-based system model VCA_Data. The use of this component is highlighted in the example project VCA_prj .
- VCA_Setup and VCA_Data work equally well for amplifiers with or without a control voltage. For amplifiers without a control voltage, the control pin should be grounded.
- In order for VCA_Data to produce an accurate model of the circuit-level VCA characterized via VCA_Setup, the Order parameter for VCA_Setup must be large enough to prevent aliasing of higher-order frequency components. For mildly non-linear circuits, an Order of approximately 5 is sufficient while an Order in the range 10-15 is recommended for highly non-linear circuits.
- Push into VCA_Setup in a Schematic window for a view of the swept Harmonic Balance simulation controllers. This component can be copied and modified to suit individual needs; typically, this would entail changing the Harmonic Balance controller HB1 to achieve more efficient simulations. For more information, refer to Harmonic Balance Simulation.
- When simulating an existing ADS2002 design containing a VCA_Setup instance in the current version of ADS, you must substitute a newer version of VCA_Setup. Failure to do this will result in the generation of warning messages and corruption of the extracted dataset.
- The extracted ADS dataset is assigned the name of the extraction design by default.
- It is possible to generate arbitrary multi-dimensional VCA datasets using a VCA_Setup component by applying a chain of ParamSweep controllers in the extraction level design and assigning the SimInstance[1] value of the inner-most sweep to be "Xi.Vcontrol" where "Xi" is the instance name of the VCA_Setup component in use. Vcontrol is a default uppermost sweep inside the extractor subcircuit, hence this assignment bridges the gap between the minimum viable parameters necessary for voltage controlled amplifier modeling and those necessary to adapt such a model for your own application needs. Refer to the example design CKT_VCA_extraction.dsn for an understanding of the multi-dimensional extraction process. The datasets generated by ADS2003C and prior versions of VCA_Setup are significantly different from that generated by the ADS2004A and subsequent versions. To learn how to access the customized multi-dimensional VCA dataset refer to VCA_Data (Voltage Controlled Amplifier).