Design Automation of ΔΣ Switched Capacitor Modulators using SPICE and MATLAB

Concerning the fact that the design of contemporary integrated circuits (IC) is practically impossible without using sophisticated Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software, this paper gives some interesting thoughts and considerations about that issue. As technology processes advances on year basis consequently EDA industry is forced to follow this trend as well. This, on the other hand, requires IC designer to frequently and efficiently accommodate to new working environments. Authors of this paper suggest a method for high level circuit analysis that is based on using common (open source or low cost) circuit simulators but precise and fast enough to meet requirements imposed by demanding mixed-signal blocks. The paper demonstrates the proposed EDA procedure on an example of second order ΔΣ modulator design. It illustrates considerable simulation time saving which is more than welcome in a world of analogue and mixed-signal design.