MT-099: Analog Circuit Simulation

In recent years there has been much pressure placed on system designers to verify their designs with computer simulations before committing to actual printed circuit board layouts and hardware. Simulating complex digital designs is extremely beneficial, and very often, the prototype phase can be eliminated entirely. The same is not true for most analog circuits. While simulation can give a greater degree of confidence in the final design, completely bypassing the prototype phase in high-speed/high-performance analog or mixed-signal circuit designs can be very risky. For this reason, simulation should be accompanied with some amount of prototyping when dealing with analog circuits. Prototyping techniques are discussed in more detail in MT100.