Cascade is a program for analyzing the noise and distortion
performance of a cascade of elements in an electronic system. A
typical application of cascade is the analysis of a receiver. A text
description of the receiver block diagram consisting of things like
amplifiers, mixers, and filters is entered into cascade. Each element
is characterized by its gain and optionally noise figure, and third
order intercept point. The program then analyzes the system and
produces a report detailing the performance at each stage.
A summary is produced which shows the relative contributions to the
total system performance of each block. This allows easy
identification of what limits system performance.
