The first part of this tutorial will examine the present “infrastructure” of MOS modeling for circuit simulation, with particular emphasis on how history has played a role at least as large as that of engineering. The viewpoint will be that of an analog design “consumer” of MOS models who must make the best possible use of a badly flawed infrastructure. In recent years, the entire structure of ...

Continuous advances in IC (integrated circuits) processing technologies offer the possibility to produce integrated circuits with increased complexity and capability at a reduced cost. In addition, integrated circuits are composed more and more of heterogeneous embedded systems with various kinds of digital, analogue, and mixed-signal circuits and sensors that are integrated on the same IC. In ...

This paper reviews the direct connection of sensors to microcontrollers without using any analogue circuit (such as an amplifier or analogue-to-digital converter) in the signal path, thus resulting in a low-cost, lower-power sensor electronic interface. It first discusses the operating principle and explains how resistive and capacitive sensors with different topologies (i.e., single, different...

We present the structure of an analog integrated circuit design laboratory to instruct at both, senior undergraduate and entry graduate levels. The teaching material includes: a laboratory manual with analog circuit design theory, pre-laboratory exercises and circuit design specifications; a reference web page with step by step instructions and examples; the use of mathematical tools for automa...

A Distortion Contribution Analysis (DCA) obtains the distortion at the output of an analog electronic circuit as a sum of distortion contributions of its sub-circuits. Similar to a noise analysis, a DCA helps a designer to pinpoint the actual source of the distortion. Classically, the DCA uses the Volterra theory to model the circuit and its sub-circuits. This DCA has been proven useful for sma...

Structured design of analogue electronics has been devised as an alternative methodology of design that resorts to basic concepts of circuit theory and general electronics in order to achieve a hierarchy-driven design process. On the contrary to traditional methods of design, where a previously designed circuit is used as initial guess in the design procedure, structured design has as starting ...

Nonlinear signal processing is necessary in many emerging applications where form factor and power are at a premium. In order to make such complex computation feasible under these constraints, it is necessary to implement the signal processors as analog circuits. Since analog circuit design is largely based on a linear systems perspective, new tools are being introduced to circuit designers tha...

In order to provide synchrotron RF cavities with proper high frequency signal, several closed-loop control systems are required. This might be achieved using analogue or digital electronics. The main advantages of a digital approach are reconfigurable modules that build up the control loop. The topology used for the digital synchronisation of the radio frequency cavities of the GSI SIS18 heavy ...

We study the dynamics of a quantum superconducting circuit which is the analogue of an atom in a high-Q cavity. The circuit consists of a Josephson charge qubit coupled to a superconducting resonator. The charge qubit can be treated as a two level quantum system whose energy separation is split by the Josephson energy E j. The superconducting resonator in our proposal is the analogue of a photo...

An analogue-VLSI winner-take-all circuit is enhanced through the addition of hysteretic feedback that emphasizes the spatial locality of competing signals using a resistive network. This circuit has application to tasks in areas such as image processing, in which inputs are not stationary with respect to the circuit array. Introduction Analogue VLSI circuits facilitate the implementation of low...