Teaching top down design of analog/mixed signal ICs through design projects

This paper describes a project course that focuses on the design of analog and mixed signal circuits through a systematic top down design flow. In the project, the student will be involved in the planning, modeling, circuit level design, physical level implementation and measurement verification of for example a successive approximation (SA) ADC or a class-D audio amplifier. Throughout the project, the project members will improve their design skills and create an understanding for the importance of a systematic top-down design methodology at the different levels of the design flow.

Introduction

IC design projects are important parts of the electrical engineering education that are often specifically asked for by representatives of the IC design industry, for example when recruiting master thesis workers. In the projects, the students get a chance to use their prior knowledge and practice real world situations like team work and work planning that span beyond the typically well-defined problems taught in traditional courses. They are allowed to make mistakes that could be very expensive in the real world, and learn from them. Altogether, the projects create an understanding and experience in the design of mixed signal System-On-Chips (SOCs) that are hard to teach in any other way. Despite all their benefits, we have throughout the years found several problems like: