Revamping a lab course for the education of students in electronic engineering

This is an ambitious academic tutored project, oriented to address the gap between standard university labs and real methods of designing ICs in the industry. Offering to our students a global view of the system, we allow them to better approach the PPA´s (Power, Performance, Area) targets of each individual part. The learning is based on modeling, simulation, prototyping and characterization, as a fundamental way to understand behavior and key parameters. Several levels of difficulty are proposed to students in an incremental way: to design a Ring Oscillator from inverters and a Phase Frequency Detector (PFD) from CMOS existing gates; to switch to existing TI CMOS MicroPower PLL CD4046B; to use a full IC for sensor applications on smart buildings.