On the evaluation of analog simulation of the dynamics of nonlinear systems for communication

This paper is focused on the evaluation of analog simulation of nonlinear systems for communication. Some problems encountered when performing analog simulations are listed. We propose some techniques to tackle them. Our motivation is to encourage scientists to use analog simulation techniques for the analysis of systems despite the enormous focus on the numerical technology that kept analog advances a bit in the dark during the past decades. We discuss the advantages of the analog computation technology, presenting it versus digital computation. To illustrate the concepts we choose a system model describing the dynamics of a Rayleigh oscillator subjected to an external quasi-periodic excitation. Sample results are presented using analog simulation. The results are compared with those from numerical simulation and a very good agreement is obtained. The main interest of this work is to prove that an analog simulator is more suitable than its numerical counterpart for the analysis of nonlinear physical problems.