Behavioral partitioning in the synthesis of mixed analog-digital systems

Synthesis of mixed-signal designs from behavioral specifications must address analog-digital partitioning. In this paper, we investigate the issues in mixed-signal behavioral partitioning and design space exploration for signal-processing systems. We begin with the system behavior specified in an intermediate format called the mixed signal flow graph, based on the time-amplitude characterization of signals. We present techniques for analog-digital behavioral partitioning of the MSFG, and performance estimation of the technology-mapped analog and digital circuits. The partitioned solution must satisfy constraints imposed by the target field programmable mixed-signal architecture on available configurable resources, available data converters, their resolution and speed, and I/O pins. The quality of the solution is evaluated based on two metrics, namely feasibility and performance. The former is a measure of the validity of the solution with respect to the architectural constraints. The latter measures the performance of the system based on bandwidth/speed and noise.