Sensitivity analysis of nonlinear circuits using Volterra series

Volterra series (VS) is frequently used in the analysis of mildly nonlinear circuits. In this approach, nonlinear circuit analysis is converted into the analysis of a series of linear circuits. The main benefit of this approach is that linear circuit analysis is well established and direct frequency domain analysis of a nonlinear circuit becomes possible. In this paper, we present for the first time the sensitivity analysis of mildly nonlinear circuits in the frequency domain as an extension of the VS approach. Sensitivity analysis is useful in comparing the quality of two different designs and in gradient based optimization methods. One example circuit is analyzed and the sensitivity of the output to circuit parameters is given.