More and more electronic systems have components that are not purely digital. Verification of such systems is a much less developed discipline than the digital equivalents and the application of formal (mathematically complete) techniques is a nascent area. In this paper, we will discuss the nature of analog circuit design and describe the way verification is done in practice today. We will des...

The analog-integrated circuits industry is exerting increasing pressure to shorten the analog circuit design time. This pressure is put primarily on the analog circuit designers that in turn demand automated circuit design tools evermore vigorously. Such tools already exist in the form of circuit optimization software packages but they all suffer a common ailment — slow convergence. Even taking...

This paper presents a general-purpose sampled-data analogue processing element that essentially functions as an analogue microprocessor (AμP). The AμP executes software programs, in a way akin to a digital microprocessor, while nevertheless operating on analogue sampled data values. This enables the design of mixed-mode systems which retain the speed/area/power advantages of the analogue signal...

A new parametric approach for detecting defects in analog integrated circuits using the feed-forward neural network trained by back-propagation method is presented. The neural network is used for classification of tested circuits by sensing differences observed in dynamic supply current of fault-free and faulty circuits. The identification is performed in time and frequency domain, followed by ...

In mixed-signal designs, substrate coupling of digital circuit noise can severely compromise the behavior of sensitive analog circuits. Proper characterization of substrate noise is therefore indispensable. In this paper, we present an experimental setup for the characterization of directly coupled substrate noise in bulk-type CMOS. We have integrated configurable substrate noise generation and...

SystemC will become more and more important for the design of digital circuits from the specification down to the RT-Level. Complex systems often contain analog components. This paper introduces concepts for the extension of the SystemC methodology for the specification and design of analog and mixed signal systems. The concepts will be illustrated on a telecommunication system including digita...

In this work, the state-of-the-art RF synthesis tools for non-linear RF and analog integrated circuits are discussed. Several commercial tools are compared and presented. For RF and non-linear analog circuits, due to the nonlinearity of the circuit, design optimization is not a trivial task. This paper will give an overview of the synthesis tools for RF and Analog IC, with emphasis on trade-off...

A new methodology for understanding single-event transient (SET) phenomena in analog circuits is described. Device and circuit simulation techniques are coupled in order to reproduce experimental data obtained from the National Semiconductor LM124 operational amplifier and to determine the most sensitive parts of the integrated circuit. Experimental data obtained at the Physical Nuclear Institu...

Depending on your expectations or claims, mixed-signal BIST could be either fact or fiction. Recognizing facts from fiction is key for the industry to successfully deploy mixed-signal BIST potentials. Is Mixed-Signal-BIST Feasible? Despite the general consensus that considers mixed-signal BIST as a relatively new technology, it has been used as part of high-performance analog design process for...

Vertical n-p-n and lateral p-n-p transistor structures of an integrated circuit are studied using an electrolytic tank analogue and it is shown that the presence of a proper field plate extending from the collector-base junction over most of the base surface will improve the current-gain factor considerably. Experimental results of the analogue study, simulating typical carrier lifetimes and ty...