In the world of electronics, high-performance systems often need to be designed with a low power consumption. Complex, versatile and flexible electronic systems are nowadays most often realized with digital circuits. For this type of circuits systematic design approaches can be followed, leading to superb high-performance, low-power solutions in a short time. To decrease cost, size and power consumption of such systems,the use of micro-electronics has proven to be essential.
However, digital circuits, which nowadays constitute the heart of many electronic systems, need interface electronics for communication with the outside world. This interface is realized with analog electronics. An example of such interface that is representative for this book is a front-end of a receiver for digital telecommunications.
This front-end circuit, which consists of several analog functional blocks — some of these blocks can even be digitally controlled — has to bring down a high-frequency signal that carries some information, to a frequency that is low enough such that this signal can be digitized and then further processed in the digital domain. At the same time, this front-end needs to amplify the possibly weak signal of interest while at the same time unwanted signals must be rejected. Although the analog functionality of this front-end is in essence very simple compared to some of the complicated tasks of the digital part of a system, the design of the analog part is often more time-consuming than the digital part. To shorten the time-consuming process, good methodologies are essential.
This edited book addresses design methodologies for low-power analog electronics.
Compared to digital circuitry, a systematic design approach for analog circuits is less straightforward. The reasons for this will be explained in the first chapter of this book. Nevertheless, the analog design community has been trying for many years to systematize many aspects of analog circuit design. This has led to many useful insights in complicated circuit aspects and methodologies, which can be reused, and to the development of interesting analog CAD tools. This book unifies some of these insights with CAD tools and design stories of analog or mixed-signal integrated circuits.
The combination of a selection of relevant designs with methodologies and CAD
is a unique aspect of this book that is seldom found in other books. However, the
combination of these two worlds is very valuable. For example, good design practice is best supported by reliable methodologies and a positive attitude versus CAD tools.