SMARTAMS · Digitially Assisted Integrated Analog Mixed Signal Systems

Integrated analog mixed signal interfaces are a fundamental part of every electronic system in today’s world ranging from consumer electronics, health care, and military where power efficiency, cost and performance are critical driving factors. These interfaces bridge the gap between the digital system and “real world” analog signals that often interface with sensors, actuators and RF components. As the inevitable path of economies of scale bringing the mask and production cost of deep sub-micron CMOS processes, integrating more and more of analog circuits together with larger digital systems has become an essential part of roadmap. In consumer electronics, this approach will lead to lowered cost and power consumption along with record small sizes for cell phones, MP3 players, digital cameras and other portable devices. In health care and military applications deeper CMOS process implementations allow for ultra small devices integrated with sensors that can live off of an energy scavenging battery. The success in integration of digital systems is not questioned. However, the same can not be claimed for the analog blocks. Relying on traditional analog methods to ensure performance in hostile digital process has caused analog circuits that are not scaling similar to their digital neighbors hence starting to take large area percentage in the system, or consuming too much of the system power, and even worse failing under process voltage and temperature variations and causing discarding of entire SOCs. This project proposal investigates the shortcomings and physical obstacles analog circuits face when integrated in CMOS processes and focuses on inventing digital signal processing methods and architectures to circumvent these problem and de-synthesize/re-correct the digital the digital bit streams. It builds on the successful past work and experience on this fresh subject and suggests new ways to shape errors due to device mismatch, parasitic capacitance, asymmetri