A refinement process for top-down mixed-signal designs thanks to SystemC-AMS

Since the emergence of Systems on Chip (SoC), designing is more challenging, especially when the system integrates analog and digital parts. Codesigning is now a necessity to simulate and validate successfully a complex SoC. This paper describes a refinement process for top-down analog and mixed-signal designs. The most abstracted levels are required to have a coherent codesign at the system level, but they are still missing in the current analog design-flows. The refinement steps from the high level down to the hardware implementation levels are described in the SystemC framework and illustrated by an example that exploits the cosimulation capabilities of SystemC-AMS.