Towards Multi-Domain and Multi-Physical Electronic Design

Electronic systems are increasingly fusing multiple technology solutions exchanging information both at electrical and at non-electrical levels, and in general both analog and digital operation coexists in multiple physical domains. This paper introduces a homogeneous multi-domain design methodology which blurs analog and digital boundaries and enables the design of etherogeneous electrical and non-electrical building blocks. The methodology is based on the identification of four fundamental quantities (quadrivium), namely signal-to-noise ratio, signal-to-interference ratio, impedance and consumed energy, applicable to both electrical and multiphysics components. Based on their constraining and their propagation on an ensemble of transactions in time domain, these four elements can be used across different domains (digital or analog), and permit architects to extract internal features, so that these are intrinsically oriented to successive physical and technology-related implementation and modeling. With example application cases, we show that these four quantities in turn define design constraints of electrical and nonelectrical internal units. After presenting an electronic design example, to show applicability in multiple physical domains, the paper discusses and applies the quadrivium also in the context of a MEMS sensor and microfluidic components.