System-level design of continuous/discrete-time heterogeneous systems applied to high-speed serial link

Many existing and future systems are and will be composed by several significantly heterogeneous modules, including both continuous and discrete components. This broad class of systems includes analog/mixed-signal systems composed of RF, analog, analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversions, and recently, a large number of mixed-signal chips where at least part of the chip design needs to measure signals with high precision. Comparing with the digital circuits, these chips have very different design and process technology demands. This paper presents an approach for system-level design of continuous/discrete systems, focusing the role of the bottom-up iterations. The approach is applied to the design of a high-speed serial link.