This article presents a general, time-domain harmonic distortion estimation method, applicable to linear CMOS circuits characterized by weakly nonlinear behavior, ranging from amplifiers, and transconductors to filters, with any number of stages. It offers a compact, fast, and systematic way to model circuits as a structure of interconnected ${G_{m}}$ -stages, and estimates the harmonic distortion at every circuit node, providing insight into the distortion contribution of every stage. The method uses a more involved model for each ${G_{m}}$ -stage that also accounts for the dependence of its output current on cross-products of its input and output voltages, improving significantly the distortion estimation accuracy. The proposed method is easily implemented in MATLAB, and intends to be integrated as a tool in EDA suites to speed-up distortion estimation. A number of examples are presented, illustrating the application of the method and validating its accuracy via comparison with Cadence Spectre simulation.

中文翻译：

---

CMOS电路中谐波失真估计的通用时域方法

本文介绍了一种通用的时域谐波失真估计方法，适用于具有弱非线性特性的线性 CMOS 电路，范围从放大器、跨导器到滤波器，具有任意级数。它提供了一种紧凑、快速和系统的方法来将电路建模为互连的结构。 ${G_{m}}$ -stages，并估计每个电路节点的谐波失真，从而深入了解每个阶段的失真贡献。该方法对每一个都使用了一个更复杂的模型 ${G_{m}}$ -stage 还考虑了其​​输出电流对其输入和输出电压的叉积的依赖性，从而显着提高了失真估计精度。所提出的方法很容易在 MATLAB 中实现，并打算作为工具集成到 EDA 套件中以加速失真估计。提供了许多示例，说明了该方法的应用并通过与 Cadence Spectre 仿真进行比较来验证其准确性。