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As research and development of renewable and clean energy based systems is advancing rapidly, the nonlinear source emulator (NSE) is becoming very essential for testing of maximum power point trackers or downstream converters. Renewable and clean energy sources play important roles in both terrestrial and nonterrestrial applications. However, most existing NSEs have only been concerned with simulating energy sources in terrestrial applications, which may not be fast enough for testing of nonterrestrial applications. In this paper, a high-bandwidth NSE is developed that is able to simulate the behaviors of a typical nonlinear source under different critical conditions that can happen during their operations. The proposed 200-W NSE, which consists of a fourth-order output filter buck converter and a novel nonlinear small-signal reference generator, can quickly react not only to an instantaneous change in the input source but also to a load step between nominal and open circuit. Moreover, all of these operation modes have a very fast settling time of only 10 $\mu$ s, which is hundreds of times faster than that of existing works. This attribute allows for higher speed and a more efficient maximum power point tracking algorithm. The proposed NSE, therefore, offers a superior dynamic performance among devices of the same kind.

A new type of Marchand balun is presented in this paper, which has the property of complex impedance transformation. To allow the Marchand balun to transform between arbitrary complex impedances, three reactances should be added to the circuit. A detailed analysis of the circuit gives the governing equations. To verify the theory, a design and electromagnetic simulation of a lumped element Marchand balun is made in a SiGe BiCMOS technology. The lumped element impementation is favorable because capacitors are placed where the additional reactances should be added. Thus it is possible to absorb a positive reactance by reducing a capacitor. At the design frequency of 10.5 GHz it matches 50Ω to 50 - j66Ω. It has an insertion loss of 5.1 dB, an input reflection of −20.8 dB, as well as phase and magnitude imbalance better than 0.2° and 0.12 dB, respectively.