An analytic method to optimum nonlinear microwave circuit design

In this paper, an analytic approach for optimum nonlinear circuit design is described. The method consists in determining, for each nonlinear component of the circuit, a closed volume including all the allowed powers at its terminal ports. The boundary of this volume, called "characteristic surface", allows extremum powers of nonlinear elements to be predicted and then optimum performance of the circuit to be deduced. Applied to practical transistor microwave oscillators, this procedure has shown good agreement between computed and measured values.