Distributed transmission lines and time-domain analysis in SPICE-like circuit simulators

Abstract

Several problems arising in the SPICE implementation of the time-domain analysis of circuits with distributed transmission lines are indicated, and it is shown that some simple modifications of the original handling of transmission lines can significantly reduce both memory requirements and CPU time needed for this analysis. The modifications allow to `trade' simulation time for accuracy of results. In effect, results more accurate than the original SPICE ones can be obtained with much smaller computational effort. An example of microwave oscillator is used as an illustration of proposed improvements.