Bücher von Willy M. C. Sansen

Static and Dynamic Performance Limitations for High Speed D/A Converters discusses the design and implementation of high speed current-steering CMOS digital-to-analog converters. Starting from the definition of the basic specifications for a D/A converter, the elements determining the static and dynamic performance are identified. Different guidelines based on scientific derivations are suggested to optimize this performance. Furthermore, a new closed formula has been derived to account for the influence of the transistor mismatch on the achievable resolution of the current-steering D/A converter. To allow a thorough understanding of the dynamic behavior, a new factor has been introduced. Moreover, the frequency dependency of the output impedance introduces harmonic distortion components which can limit the maximum attainable spurious free dynamic range. Finally, the last part of the book gives an overview on different existing transistor mismatch models and the link with the static performance of the D/A converter.

The analysis and prediction of nonlinear behavior in electronic circuits has long been a topic of concern for analog circuit designers. The recent explosion of interest in portable electronics such as cellular telephones, cordless telephones and other applications has served to reinforce the importance of these issues. The need now often arises to predict and optimize the distortion performance of diverse electronic circuit configurations operating in the gigahertz frequency range, where nonlinear reactive effects often dominate. However, there have historically been few sources available from which design engineers could obtain information on analysis tech- niques suitable for tackling these important problems. I am sure that the analog circuit design community will thus welcome this work by Dr. Wambacq and Professor Sansen as a major contribution to the analog circuit design literature in the area of distortion analysis of electronic circuits. I am personally looking forward to hav- ing a copy readily available for reference when designing integrated circuits for communication systems.

It is a great honor to provide an introduction for Dr. Frank Op 't Eynde's and Dr. Willy Sansen's book "e;Analog Interfaces for Digital Signal Processing Systems"e;. The field of analog integrated circuit design is undergoing rapid evolution. The pervasiveness of digital processing has considerably modified the micro-system architectures: the analog part of complex mixed systems is more and more pushed at the boundary limits of the processing chain. Moreover, the increased performance of digital circuits, in terms of accuracy and speed, are making the specification requirements of analog circuits very strict. In addition to this, the technology, supply voltage and power consumption of analog circuits must be compatible with those, typical for digital circuits. Therefore, in a few words, analog circuits are becoming complex and specialised interfaces between the real world and digital signal processing domains. This technological evolution should be accompanied by an equivalently fast evolution in designer competencies. Knowledge of complicated signal handling should be quickly replaced by know-how of simple but very accurate and very fast signal processing and a solid background in data conversion techniques. All of this through the use of the CMOS (and possibly BiCMOS) technology.

Analog integrated circuits are very important as interfaces between the digital parts of integrated electronic systems and the outside world. A large portion of the effort involved in designing these circuits is spent in the layout phase. Whereas the physical design of digital circuits is automated to a large extent, the layout of analog circuits is still a manual, time-consuming and error-prone task. This is mainly due to the continuous nature of analog signals, which causes analog circuit performance to be very sensitive to layout parasitics. The parasitic elements associated with interconnect wires cause loading and coupling effects that degrade the frequency behaviour and the noise performance of analog circuits. Device mismatch and thermal effects put a fundamental limit on the achievable accuracy of circuits. For successful automation of analog layout, advanced place and route tools that can handle these critical parasitics are required. In the past, automatic analog layout tools tried to optimize the layout without quantifying the performance degradation introduced by layout parasitics. Therefore, it was not guaranteed that the resulting layout met the specifications and one or more layout iterations could be needed. In Analog Layout Generation for Performance and Manufacturability, the authors propose a performance driven layout strategy to overcome this problem. In this methodology, the layout tools are driven by performance constraints, such that the final layout, with parasitic effects, still satisfies the specifications of the circuit. The performance degradation associated with an intermediate layout solution is evaluated at runtime using predetermined sensitivities. In contrast with other performance driven layout methodologies, the tools proposed in this book operate directly on the performance constraints, without an intermediate parasitic constraint generation step. This approach makes a complete and sensible trade-off between the different layout alternatives possible at runtime and therefore eliminates the possible feedback route between constraint derivation, placement and layout extraction. Besides its influence on the performance, layout also has a profound impact on the yield and testability of an analog circuit. In Analog Layout Generation for Performance and Manufacturability, the authors outline a new criterion to quantify the detectability of a fault and combine this with a yield model to evaluate the testability of an integrated circuit layout. They then integrate this technique with their performance driven routing algorithm to produce layouts that have optimal manufacturability while still meeting their performance specifications. Analog Layout Generation for Performance and Manufacturability will be of interest to analog engineers, researchers and students.