Modeling and Synthesis Tools for Analog Circuit Design

The presence of several nonlinear analog circuits and Micro-Electro-Mechanical MEM components in modern mixed signal System-on-Chips (SoC) makes the fully automatic synthesis and optimization of such systems a task extremely challenging. In order to address the problem we are developing a Platform Based Design Methodology for Analog RF and Mixed-Signal systems. An Analog Platform consists of a library of pre-characterized analog components that can be instantiated, interconnected and optimally sized to realize a given functional specification at the system level. In order to enable the large scale adoption of our methodology supporting tools are needed for both characterizing the libraries of analog components, and for instantiating and optimizing each component to realize a given functionality. Initial efforts in this research activity focus on the library characterization by developing tools for the automatic generation, of "field solver accurate", and geometrically parameterized dynamical models of analog linear and nonlinear components. Specific contributions include parameterized modeling of interconnect bus structures [19, 20], RF inductors including displacement currents, skin and proximity effects, substrate, fullwave and distributed effects, nonlinear circuits and MEMS.