This paper provides an investigation of power distribution network (PDN) performance by a full-wave prediction tool and by experimental measurements. A set of six real boards characterized by increasing complexity is considered in order to establish a solid base for behaviour understanding of printed circuit boards. How the growing complexity impacts on the board performance is investigated by measurements and by simulations. Strengths and weakness of PDN modeling by the full-wave software tool Microwave Studio are highlighted and discussed.

Path following circuits (PFC's) are circuits for solving nonlinear problems on the circuit simulator SPICE. In the method of PFC's, formulas of numerical methods are described by circuits, which are solved by SPICE. Using PFC's, numerical analysis without programming is possible, and various techniques implemented in SPICE will make the numerical analysis very efficient. In this paper, we apply the PFC's of the homotopy method to various nonlinear problems (excluding circuit analysis) where the homotopy method is proven to be globally convergent; namely, we apply the method to fixed-point problems, linear programming problems, and nonlinear programming problems. This approach may give a new possibility to the fields of applied mathematics and operations research. Moreover, this approach makes SPICE applicable to a broader class of scientific problems.

Mixed Quasi Newton simulation algorithm that is capable of calculating analog circuits containing mixed level of element models is presented. Conventional circuit simulators usually apply Newton method to solve nonlinear system equations resulted from circuit equations. At each Newton iteration step, it is necessary to reevaluate the Jacobian stamp of circuit elements. However, obtaining the Jacobian stamp of elements described by complex behavior models is a computationally expensive process. To reduce the number of Jacobian evaluations, we combine Newton method and Quasi-Newton method as a new updating scheme. The simulation results show that our algorithm can reduce the number of Jacobian evaluations and improve the simulation time, particularly when simulating circuits containing many behavior model elements.

This paper describes a waveform relaxationbased coupled lossy transmission line circuit simulator DESIRE3T+. First, the generalized method of characteristics (GMC) is reviewed, which replaces a lossy transmission line with an equivalent disjoint network. Next, the generalized line delay window (GLDW) partitioning technique is proposed, which accelerates the transient analysis of the circuits including transmission lines replaced by GMC model. Finally GMC model and GLDW technique are implemented in hte relaxation-based circuit simulator DESIRE3T+ which can analyze bipolar transistor circuits by using the dynamic decomposition technique, and the performance is estimated.