RoCFaST: a method of speeding up simulation of ΔΣ modulators using state-space tracking

A dedicated simulation method for discrete-time ΔΣ modulators is presented. This method is called RoCFaST, which stands for Reduction of Calculations by following a State-space Track. It is truly dedicated since it makes use of the quantizer nonlinearity to drastically reduce the number of calculations needed to perform a simulation. The algorithm is implemented in C and a number of experimental results show this method to be at least three to four times faster than traditional discrete-time simulation methods. This makes the method useful for multiple variable sweeps during design exploration and for use in automatic synthesis of ΔΣ modulators.