AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims to give to the student knowledge and skills related to electronic devices and microelectronics.

Attendance and active participation in the proposed educational activities (lectures) and individual study will allow the student to:

• be able to analyze the electrical scheme of a signal conditioning CMOS circuit and understand the functionality of each transistor in the circuit

• analyze by means of a circuit simulation the operation of a signal conditioning CMOS circuit according to the usual operating modes i.e. in direct current (working point), over time, in the frequency domain

• evaluate the performance of a transconductance amplifier using the most used evaluation metrics e.g. time and frequency response, power consumption, response to differential mode and common mode inputs, slew rate

• analyze and develop signal conditioning circuits

• analyze and develop sensor signal acquisition circuits

• understand the design flow of a transconductance operational amplifier circuit

• understand the main analysis metrics of Analog-Digital and Digital-Analog conversion systems

• understand the main circuit architectures of Analog-Digital and Digital-Analog conversion systems

• analyze the effects of the dispersion of technological parameters on the performance of a circuit in CMOS technology

TEACHING METHODS

The course consists of lectures for a total of about 50 hours. Attendance to lectures is compulsory, as per the didactic regulations.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The course program includes the following topics:

• charge inversion regions and operating points of the MOS transistor

• Structure of MOS devices and CMOS technology

• The MOS transistor used as a digital and analog switch

• Basic circuit configurations and "cascode" topology

o Common drain stage

o Common source stage

o Common gate stage

o Double cascode

o Folded cascode

o Current mirror

• Transconductance Amplifier, Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA)

o Differential pair

o Differential pair with active load

o Analysis of the working point and frequency analysis

o Cascode and folded cascode circuit topology

o Ancillary circuits: common mode voltage control circuit, bias circuit

• Multistage amplifier: OTA Miller

• Robustness to the dispersion of technological parameters and technological scaling

• Design flow

• Introduction to continuous time and sampled time analog filters

• Analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion systems

• Sigma-Delta modulator

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

The teaching material is published on the Aulaweb page of the course.

The reference textbooks are:

-              Sedra/Smith, Circuiti per la Microelettronica, EdiSES, Quarta Edizione.

Altri testi di approfondimento:

-              Y. Tzividis, Mixed ANALOG-DIGITAL VLSI Devices and TECHNOLOGY, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pie. Ltd., 2002

-              B. Razavi, Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits, McGraw-Hill, 2000.

-              W. Sansen, Analog Design Essentials, Springer, 2005.

-              N.H.E. Weste, D.M. Harris, CMOS VLSI Design – A circuit and system perspective, 4th Ed., Addison Wesley Publisher, 2011