Nonlinear Characterization for Microstrip Circuits with Low Passive Intermodulation

Products of passive intermodulation (PIM) generated by weak nonlinearities of passive circuits subjected to relatively high transmit power of multicarrier signals may cause strong interference in emerging broadband and multiradio communication systems. This paper presents a new approach to a characterization of distributed nonlinearities in printed circuits fabricated on commercial grade microwave laminate materials. An efficient procedure for PIM characterization has been devised using the commercial RF-CAD software. The phenomenological model has been developed to take into account concurrent distributed nonlinearities of printed transmission lines and to evaluate PIM products of arbitrary order. It has been observed for the first time that the sources of nonlinearity in typical microstrip circuits may have highly uneven distributions which require a different means for PIM characterization and modeling. The proposed methodology has been validated by accurate predictions of the PIM response of complex circuit layouts. The results of this paper pave the way to a holistic approach to the design of planar microwave circuits and devices under given linearity constraints.