Program Overview

Sceptre is an interactive frequency domain circuit analysis program for the RF/Microwave engineer. It is veryuseful for a wide variety of active or passive circuit designs. A familiarity with s-parameters and elementary two-port theory is assumed.

Note: If you view the appendices, (A,B,...) mentioned below. Use your browser BACK button to return to this page.

The Element Library, (see Appendix A), contains many lumped and distributed elements. Each element may be interconnected with others in a variety of ways, (see Appendix B). This flexibility permits the analysis or design of very simple or quite complex networks.

The calculated data may be output in any one of several different formats, (see Appendix C), to the screen or a printer. In addition, a tweak feature permits individual element values to be adjusted to view the overall effect on circuit performance.

This User Manual will introduce you to Sceptre by way of several examples. You'll see how to specify elements, interconnect them, and output the data.

If you are new to circuit design, or a seasoned veteran, you'll find Sceptre a valuable tool!


Special Features

In addition to the Sceptre Module, a File Utility allows you to create, edit, save, delete, list, or catalog circuit files. We call these .CKT files, and they are discussed in Appendix E.

Note that Users can, if they wish, use Windows Notepad to edit and/or print .CKT files. However, if you do this, be careful, you cannot change the file format, and you cannot use an editor that adds control characters to the file. You can only use a simple ascii text file editor like NotePad.

Sceptre will also let you create impedance files, (we call these .IMP files), for use with our SmithMatch program.

In addition to the sections dealing with program operation, a tutorial, (for newbies), is provided in Appendix D and shows how stability factor is calculated.

Note: Your screen display will be in a black DOS window. We use color boxes, on occasion, to make the menus and tabular output stand out from the white page background.