Electronic circuit simulation

About: Electronic circuit simulation is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2754 publications have been published within this topic receiving 36184 citations. The topic is also known as: ECS.

The designer's guide to SPICE and Spectre

Abstract: From the Publisher: The Designer's Guide to SPICE and Spectrer is an in-depth guide to circuit simulators from a designer's perspective: the pitfalls of circuit simulation, such as convergence and accuracy problems, are explained in terms a circuit designer is comfortable with. The book gives designers insight into why these problems occur and how to avoid them. It also provides practical advice on how to make many difficult measurements with a circuit simulator, such as loop gain of an op-amp or distortion measurements of such clocked circuits as d-to-a converters and sample-and-hold circuits. Finally, suggestions are given about how to handle difficult classes of circuits, such as oscillators, charge-storage or very large circuits. After reading The Designer's Guide to SPICE and Spectrer, you will spend less time fighting your simulator and more time exploring, understanding and designing your circuits.

Design and optimization of CPW circuits using EM-ANN models for CPW components

Abstract: Accurate and efficient electromagnetically trained artificial neural-network (EM-ANN) models have been developed for coplanar waveguide (CPW) circuit components. Modeled components include: CPW transmission lines (frequency dependent Z/sub 0/ and /spl epsiv//sub re/), 90/spl deg/ bends, short-circuit stubs, open-circuit stubs, step-in-width discontinuities, and symmetric T-junctions. These models allow for circuit design, simulation, and optimization within a commercial microwave circuit simulator environment, while providing the accuracy of electromagnetic (EM) simulation. Design and optimization of a CPW folded double-stub filter and a 50-/spl Omega/ 3-dB power divider circuit using the developed CPW EM-ANN models are demonstrated.

A circuit representation technique for automated circuit design

Abstract: We present a method of automatically generating circuit designs using evolutionary search and a set of circuit constructing primitives arranged in a linear sequence. This representation has the desirable property that virtually all sets of circuit-constructing primitives result in valid circuit graphs. While this representation excludes certain circuit topologies, it is capable of generating a rich set of them including many of the useful topologies seen in hand-designed circuits. Our system allows circuit size (number of devices), circuit topology, and device values to he evolved. Using a parallel genetic algorithm and circuit simulation software, we present experimental results as applied to three analog filter and two amplifier design tasks. In all tasks, our system is able to generate circuits that achieve the target specifications. Although the evolved circuits exist as software models, detailed examinations of each suggest that they are electrically well behaved and thus suitable for physical implementation. The modest computational requirements suggest that the ability to evolve complex analog circuit representations in software is becoming more approachable on a single engineering workstation.

Berkeley reliability tools-BERT

Abstract: Berkeley reliability tools (BERT) simulates the circuit degradation (drift) due to hot-electron degradation in MOSFETs and bipolar transistors and predicts circuit failure rates due to oxide breakdown and electromigration in CMOS, bipolar, and BiCMOS circuits. With the increasing importance of reliability in today's and future technology, a reliability simulator such as this is expected to serve as the engine of design-for-reliability in a building-in-reliability paradigm. BERT works in conjunction with a circuit simulator such as SPICE in order to simulate reliability for actual circuits, and, like SPICE, acts as an interactive tool for design. BERT is introduced and the current work being done is summarized. BERT is used to study the reliability of a BiCMOS inverter chain, and performance data are presented. >

Macromodeling of integrated circuit operational amplifiers

Abstract: A macromodel has been developed for integrated circuit (IC) op amps which provides an excellent pin-for-pin representation. The model elements are those which are common to most circuit simulators. The macromodel is a factor of more than six times less complex than the original circuit, and provides simulated circuit responses that have run times which are an order of magnitude faster and less costly in comparison to modeling the op amp at the electronic device level. Expressions for the values of the elements of the macromodel are developed starting from values of typical response characteristics of the op amp. Examples are given for three representative op amps. In addition, the performance of the macromodel in linear and nonlinear systems is presented. For comparison, the simulated circuit performance when modeling at the device level is also demonstrated.