Gordon W. Roberts – författare

Today, most, if not at all, microelectronic circuit design is carried out with the aid of a computer-aided circuit analysis program such as SPICE. SPICE, an acronym for Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis, is considered by many to be the de-facto industrial standard for computer-aided circuit analysis for microelectronic circuits, mainly because it is used by the majority of IC designers in North America today. It is reasonable to say that to master electronic circuit design, one must also develop a fair amount of expertise in a circuit analysis program such as SPICE. It is therefore our aim in this text to describe how SPICE is used to analyse microelectronic circuits, and more importantly, outline how SPICE is used in the process of design itself. There is a tendency for new designers of electronic circuits to be overwhelmed by the analysis capability of a circuit analysis program such as SPICE, and ignore the thought-process provided by a hand analysis using simple models for the transistors. Experience has shown that this generally leads to poor designs because most of the design effort is spent blindly searching for ways to improve the design using a brute-foce hit-and-miss approach. It is our intention in this book to avoid this pitfall and teach the reader what not to do with SPICE. This is accomplished by keying each example of this text to those presented in Microelectronic Circuits, Third Edition, by Sedra and Smith, where a complete hand analysis is provided. In this way, the insight provided by a hand analysis is readily available to our readers. All examples in this text are also available on-line via the world-wide-web site http://www.macs.ee.mcgill.ca/~roberts/.

This text deals with the design and analysis of log-domain filter circuits. It describes several synthesis methods that aid the designer in developing bipolar or BiCMOS filter circuits with cut-off frequencies ranging from the low kilohertz range to several hundreds of megahertz. Filter response deviations due to transistor-level nonidealities are systematically analyzed, leading to effective electronic compensation schemes. Numerous examples are provided in the text with measured experimental data from IC prototypes. The book is intended for engineers in research or development, as well as advanced-level engineering students. Extensive discussion on filter text metrics should also interest engineers who are responsible for testing high-performance, high-speed analog or mixed-signal products.

The book begins with an introduction to the testing problem and a review of conventional signal generation techniques. The book then describes an oversampling-based oscillator capable of generating high-precision analogue tones using a combination of digital logic and D/A conversion. These concepts are then extended to multi-tone testing schemes without introducing a severe hardware penalty. The concepts are extended further to encompass piece-wise linear waveforms such as square, triangular and sawtooth waves. Experimental results are presented to verify the ideas in each chapter, and finally, conclusions are drawn. For those readers unfamiliar with delta-sigma modulation techniques, a brief introduction to this subject is also provided in an appendix. The book should be useful for test engineers, researchers and circuits designers with an interest in IC testing methods.

Analog Signal Generation for Built-In-Self-Test (BIST) of Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuits is a concise introduction to a powerful new signal generation technique. The book begins with a brief introduction to the testing problem and a review of conventional signal generation techniques. The book then describes an oversampling-based oscillator capable of generating high-precision analog tones using a combination of digital logic and D/A conversion. These concepts are then extended to multi-tone testing schemes without introducing a severe hardware penalty. The concepts are extended further to encompass piece-wise linear waveforms such as square, triangular and sawtooth waves. Experimental results are presented to verify the ideas in each chapter and finally, conclusions are drawn. For those readers unfamiliar with delta-sigma modulation techniques, a brief introduction to this subject is also provided in an appendix. The book is ideal for test engineers, researchers and circuits designers with an interest in IC testing methods.