ABSTRACT
The growth of personal communication and Internet industries along with the need for portability has resulted in an ever-increasing demand for low cost, high volume microwave circuitry. This chapter discusses the typical steps involved in a design cycle, some basic requirements for a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) program and looks at the theory behind the most popular CAD programs, and some emerging CAD technologies. There are certain features that a microwave CAD tool must have in order to improve the productivity of the microwave designer. The microwave designer is typically interested in two types of distortions — the harmonic content of the time waveform and the intermodulation products caused by the excitation of the circuit by two signals typically close to each other in frequency. Since the harmonic balance techniques were developed specifically to aid the microwave designer in the design of nonlinear circuits, the available programs are custom tailored to provide the results in a format familiar to the designer.
