Momentum Method for Improving the Convergence of Newton-Raphson Method for Nonlinear Circuit Transient Simulations

Abstract

With the growing scale of circuits designed nowadays, the computational efficiency of transient circuit simulations that verify the behavior of circuits becomes an important topic. The popular Newton-Raphson method applied in simulation programs like SPICE exhibit convergence issues when processing circuits with a mix of linear and nonlinear devices. Traditional methods proposed to tackle these issues are either effective to a limited group of circuits or entail more computation. This paper proposes the momentum method to improve convergence without requiring additional computation, demonstrates its effectiveness, and provides experimental results on an example.