Activity based high level modeling of dynamic switching currents in digital IC modules

Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) becomes an increasingly important subject within the IC design process, because more and more market segments demand for low electromagnetic emission (EME) of integrated circuits. Therefore automatic emission model generation tools need to become part of the design flow. In this paper we present an automatic generation procedure of equivalent current sources (ECS) from chip netlists, based on an analytic approach. The ECSs describe the dynamic switching currents of digital function blocks of complex ICs. Worst case or typical current profiles are not generated by pattern simulation, but by pre-characterized logic cells and a set of configuration parameters like switching activity