ARCHGEN: Automated synthesis of analog systems

High-level design of analog systems is an open area that needs to be addressed with the emerging trend of integrating mixed analog-digital systems. Design methods compatible across the analog-digital boundaries would expedite the design process, and in this paper we address analog high-level design issues. An approach for systems-level synthesis of a class of analog systems is presented. A behavioral level for the analog domain is characterized in terms of state equations and transfer functions in the continuous and discrete domains. State-space representations are generated from transfer function specifications that exhibit system level characteristics such as controllability and observability as, well as decoupled and parallel architectures. These state-space representations are synthesized into behavioral-level, technology-independent architectures composed of analog functional components. An intermediate architecture in a circuit implementation technology is synthesized from the behavioral architecture. The various algorithmic procedures for synthesis are implemented in the program ARCHGEN. Behavioral simulation is used for architecture verification and design space exploration.<>