Most digital circuits process information that is encoded as zeros and ones determin-istically. For example, the arithmetic unit of a modern computer performs calculationson deterministic integer or floating-point values represented in binary radix. However,digital computation need not be deterministic. In this dissertation, we consider an al-ternative paradigm: digital circuits...

This paper considers the problem of how to efficiently measure a large and complex information field with optimally few observations. Specifically, we investigate how to stochastically estimate modular criticality values in a large-scale digital circuit with a very limited number of measurements in order to minimize the total measurement efforts and time. We prove that, through sparsity-promoti...

This article aims to describe the fundamentals of analog and digital testing methods to analyze the difficulties of analog testing and to develop an approach to test the analog components in a mixed signal circuit environment. Oscillation based, built-in self-test methodology for testing analog components in mixed-signal circuits, in particular, is discussed. A major advantage of the OBIST meth...

The ability to evaluate the testability of digital circuits before they are actually implemented is critical for designing highly reliable systems. This feature enables designers to verify the fault detection capability of online as well as offline testable digital circuits for both permanent and transient faults, during the design stage of the circuits. This paper presents a technique for tran...

An on-chip process, supply voltage, and temperature (PVT) compensation technique for low-voltage CMOS digital circuits was proposed. Because the degradation of circuit performance originates from the variation of the saturation current in transistors, we developed a compensation circuit consisting of a reference current that is independent of PVT variations. The circuit is operated so that the ...

In this paper, Digital Low Dropout Regulator (LDO) is proposed to provide the low noise and tunable power supply voltage to the 0.5-V near-threshold logic circuits. Because the conventional LDO feedback-controlled by the operational amplifier fail to operate at 0.5 V, the digital LDO eliminates all analog circuits and is controlled by digital circuits, which enables the 0.5-V operation. The dev...

A major concern in mixed-signal circuits is the noise injected by the digital circuits into sensitive analog circuits. Of particular interest in this work is the problem with large capacitive coupling between the digital clock network and the substrate shared with the analog circuits. It is in general more easy to reduce low frequency noise compared with high frequency noise. Therefore, we have...

Polymorphic digital circuits are circuits composed of polymorphic (multifunctional) as well as ordinary gates. In addition to its standard logic function (such as NAND), a polymorphic gate exhibits another logic function which is activated under a specific condition, for example, when Vdd, temperature, illumination or a special signal reaches a certain level. This paper describes existing polym...

The types of circuits in which analog design techniques are employed typically differ from those in which digital design methods are used, with analog circuits being commonly applied to high speed, low precision functional blocks such as mixers and RF modulators, while digital circuits are chosen for high precision, high complexity blocks that operate at frequencies well below the fT of the tra...

The transconductance characteristics of MOS transistors realized in 0.18 p n CMOS technology have B zerotemperature coefticient (ZTC) bias point. The presence of this point influences performance of both analog and digital circuits. The offset voltage drift in a saurce-coupled differential pair strongly increases, if the transistor drain currents are equal to the bias currents of ZTC point. It ...