Mixer Specifications

SysCalc provides a mixer model that accommodates most parameters considered significant in system design. These parameters are found on the Mixer Specification Page of the Component Properties dialog. This page is only available when a mixer is currently selected. You can choose the simpler model used in earlier version of SysCalc by checking the "Simple Model" button at the bottom of the dialog. This will disable (gray out) the parameters shown below.

Note	The noise figure (or Effective Temperature) specified on the Parameters Page is considered to be SSB for mixers.

Properties

The properties discussed below allow you to model your system using familiar parameters:

Fixed Tuned	When checked, the mixer is not tunable. There can be only one tunable mixer in the system. When the mixer is not Fixed Tuned, the mixer LO is automatically adjusted using the Source Palette.
Mixer Input	Specifies which mixer port is the input.
Frequency Relationship	A drop down list specifying the possible relationships between RF, LO and IF. The list changes depending whether the project is a Receiver or Transmitter design.
RF Min, Max	The low and high end of the RF tuning range (MHz) respectively.
LO Min, Max	The low and high end of the LO tuning range (MHz) respectively.
IF	The mixer IF frequency in MHz.
Stepsize	The stepsize (MHz) used in the Source Palette
Image Rejection (dB)	The Suppression in dB that the mixer rejects image-side content. For non-image rejection mixers, specify zero. Note — The NF specified on the Parameters Page is always considered SSB. For a non-image rejecting mixer, the image noise will fold into the IF, thus, producing 3 dB more noise than indicated by the specified NF. The value supplied in this field will reduce the image noise by the indicated dB.
LO Phase Noise	This list control allows you to specify the phase noise in dBc/Hz at specific offsets from the carrier in kHz. The data supplied here is utilized by the LO Phase Noise Report. The following menu is displayed when you right mouse click on the control. Using the menu, you can add or delete a row from the control.
Choose Mixer/ Unlink Data	A data file representing the mixer's harmonic performance intermodulation can be attached to the currently selected mixer (See Mixer Data File for important information). When there is no attached data file, the button caption reads, Choose Mixer. When a data file is attached, the caption reads Unlink Data. The file data is only utilized by the Spurious Report. The RF-IF loss specified in the data file is displayed on the Parameters Page of the Component Properties dialog.
Global Suppression	When selected you can supply a global IM suppression for all NxM products. This is useful when you do not have a mixer data file but would like to incorporate some minimum suppression in the spurious calculations. You can also specify the LO leakage value as well.

Mixer Selection

When you click the Choose Mixer/Unlink Data button the following dialog box appears. Information regarding the currently selected mixer is displayed in the lower part of the dialog. You can use the Prev/Next buttons to display the data sets contained in the file. The selected data set is the one that will be used when you click the Open button. If the file contains only a single data set, then the Prev/Next buttons will be disabled.