While S-Parameters are great for quickly assessing the performance of a channel system sometimes they are not so great when it comes to using them in simulation. In particular, using S-Parameter models for time domain simulations can cause all sorts of convergence issues (usually in the form of passivity and causality issues) There are a lot of commercial tools out there that will take your S-Parameter model and convert it to a SPICE equivalent macro-model. The benefit here is that it will usually simulate a lot faster and without convergence issues.

Your mileage will vary with various tools and I’ll update this list as I come across more tools.

EMtoSPICE

I did come across EMtoSPICE from EM Wonder that might be a good solution. I haven’t used this tool before and not sure of the cost but you can download an evaluation.

S-Parameter Explorer

This is more of an S-Parameter viewer but Explorer also contains a converter to SPICE model as well. There is a free version that I have used and it plots S-Parameter models without any issues. I have not tried the full paid version with the SPICE model conversion

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 5th, 2011 at 6:45 am and is filed under eda, signal integrity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.