What you’ll find here is a fascinating compendium of fundamental problem formulations of analog design centering and sizing. This essential work provides a differentiated knowledge about the tasks of analog design centering and sizing. In particular, worst-case scenarios are formulated and analyzed. This work is right at the crossing point between process and design technology, and is both reference work and textbook for understanding CAD methods in analog sizing.

Despite the fact that in the digital domain, designers can take full benefits of IPs and design automation tools to synthesize and design very complex systems, the analog designers’ task is still considered as a ‘handcraft’, cumbersome and very time consuming process. Thus, tremendous efforts are being deployed to develop new design methodologies in the analog/RF and mixed-signal domains. This book collects 16 state-of-the-art contributions devoted to the topic of systematic design of analog, RF and mixed signal circuits. Divided in the two parts Methodologies and Techniques recent theories, synthesis techniques and design methodologies, as well as new sizing approaches in the field of robust analog and mixed signal design automation are presented for researchers and R/D engineers.

Improving the performance of existing technologies has always been a focal practice in the development of computational systems. However, as circuitry is becoming more complex, conventional techniques are becoming outdated and new research methodologies are being implemented by designers. Performance Optimization Techniques in Analog, Mix-Signal, and Radio-Frequency Circuit Design features recent advances in the engineering of integrated systems with prominence placed on methods for maximizing the functionality of these systems. This book emphasizes prospective trends in the field and is an essential reference source for researchers, practitioners, engineers, and technology designers interested in emerging research and techniques in the performance optimization of different circuit designs.

This book presents a new methodology with reduced time impact to address the problem of analog integrated circuit (IC) yield estimation by means of Monte Carlo (MC) analysis, inside an optimization loop of a population-based algorithm. The low time impact on the overall optimization processes enables IC designers to perform yield optimization with the most accurate yield estimation method, MC simulations using foundry statistical device models considering local and global variations. The methodology described by the authors delivers on average a reduction of 89% in the total number of MC simulations, when compared to the exhaustive MC analysis over the full population. In addition to describing a newly developed yield estimation technique, the authors also provide detailed background on automatic analog IC sizing and optimization.

This book introduces readers to a variety of tools for automatic analog integrated circuit (IC) sizing and optimization. The authors provide a historical perspective on the early methods proposed to tackle automatic analog circuit sizing, with emphasis on the methodologies to size and optimize the circuit, and on the methodologies to estimate the circuit’s performance. The discussion also includes robust circuit design and optimization and the most recent advances in layout-aware analog sizing approaches. The authors describe a methodology for an automatic flow for analog IC design, including details of the inputs and interfaces, multi-objective optimization techniques, and the enhancements made in the base implementation by using machine leaning techniques. The Gradient model is discussed in detail, along with the methods to include layout effects in the circuit sizing. The concepts and algorithms of all the modules are thoroughly described, enabling readers to reproduce the methodologies, improve the quality of their designs, or use them as starting point for a new tool. An extensive set of application examples is included to demonstrate the capabilities and features of the methodologies described.

Computational complexity is a serious bottleneck for the design process in virtually any engineering area. While migration from prototyping and experimental-based design validation to verification using computer simulation models is inevitable and has a number of advantages, high computational costs of accurate, high-fidelity simulations can be a major issue that slows down the development of computer-aided design methodologies, particularly those exploiting automated design improvement procedures, e.g., numerical optimization. The continuous increase of available computational resources does not always translate into shortening of the design cycle because of the growing demand for higher accuracy and necessity to simulate larger and more complex systems. Accurate simulation of a single design of a given system may be as long as several hours, days or even weeks, which often makes design automation using conventional methods impractical or even prohibitive. Additional problems include numerical noise often present in the simulation data, possible presence of multiple locally optimum designs, as well as multiple conflicting objectives. In this edited book, various techniques that can alleviate solving computationally expensive engineering design problems are presented. One of the most promising approaches is the use of fast replacement models, so-called surrogates, that reliably represent the expensive, simulation-based model of the system/device of interest but they are much cheaper and analytically tractable. Here, a group of international experts summarize recent developments in the area and demonstrate applications in various disciplines of engineering and science. The main purpose of the work is to provide the basic concepts and formulations of the surrogate-based modeling and optimization paradigm, as well as discuss relevant modeling techniques, optimization algorithms and design procedures. Therefore, this book should be useful to researchers and engineers from any discipline where computationally heavy simulations are used on daily basis in the design process.

Computational intelligence techniques are becoming more and more important for automated problem solving nowadays. Due to the growing complexity of industrial applications and the increasingly tight time-to-market requirements, the time available for thorough problem analysis and development of tailored solution methods is decreasing. There is no doubt that this trend will continue in the foreseeable future. Hence, it is not surprising that robust and general automated problem solving methods with satisfactory performance are needed.

Contemporary engineering design is heavily based on computer simulations. Accurate, high-fidelity simulations are used not only for design verification but, even more importantly, to adjust parameters of the system to have it meet given performance requirements. Unfortunately, accurate simulations are often computationally very expensive with evaluation times as long as hours or even days per design, making design automation using conventional methods impractical. These and other problems can be alleviated by the development and employment of so-called surrogates that reliably represent the expensive, simulation-based model of the system or device of interest but they are much more reasonable and analytically tractable. This volume features surrogate-based modeling and optimization techniques, and their applications for solving difficult and computationally expensive engineering design problems. It begins by presenting the basic concepts and formulations of the surrogate-based modeling and optimization paradigm and then discusses relevant modeling techniques, optimization algorithms and design procedures, as well as state-of-the-art developments. The chapters are self-contained with basic concepts and formulations along with applications and examples. The book will be useful to researchers in engineering and mathematics, in particular those who employ computationally heavy simulations in their design work.

This book presents a collection of papers emphasizing applications of mathematical models and methods to real-world problems of relevance for industry, life science, environment, finance and so on. The biannual Conference of ECMI (the European Consortium of Mathematics in Industry) held in 2014 focused on various aspects of industrial and applied mathematics. The five main topics addressed at the conference were mathematical models in life science, material science and semiconductors, mathematical methods in the environment, design automation and industrial applications, and computational finance. Several other topics have been treated, such as, among others, optimization and inverse problems, education, numerical methods for stiff pdes, model reduction, imaging processing, multi physics simulation, mathematical models in textile industry. The conference, which brought together applied mathematicians and experts from industry, provided a unique opportunity to exchange ideas, problems and methodologies, bridging the gap between mathematics and industry and contributing to the advancement of science and technology. The conference has included a presentation of EU-Maths-In (European Network of Mathematics for Industry and Innovation), a recent joint initiative of ECMI and EMS. The proceedings from this conference represent a snapshot of the current activity in industrial mathematics in Europe, and are highly relevant to anybody interested in the latest applications of mathematics to industrial problems.

This book presents innovative strategies to implement ultra-low voltage (ULV) and low power active circuits used in low energy RF receivers. The authors demonstrate that the use of single-stage amplifiers with the input negative transconductance compensation is a key strategy to allow the operation at low voltage levels with reduced power dissipation. Also, some design methodologies, based on the CMOS transistor operation point, are analyzed and a powerful design methodology is described for this kind of circuit. Readers will be enabled to implement the techniques described to design communication circuits with low power dissipation, useful in a variety of applications, including IoT/IoE devices.