VLSI ANALOG-DIGITAL INTERFACE ICS
Stampa
Enrollment year
2019/2020
Academic year
2020/2021
Regulations
DM270
Academic discipline
ING-INF/01 (ELECTRONICS)
Department
DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL,COMPUTER AND BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
Course
ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING
Curriculum
Photonics
Year of study
Period
1st semester (28/09/2020 - 22/01/2021)
ECTS
6
Lesson hours
51 lesson hours
Language
English
Activity type
WRITTEN AND ORAL TEST
Teacher
MANSTRETTA DANILO (titolare) - 6 ECTS
Prerequisites
The course assumes good knowledge of the basic electronic circuits (bachelor electrical-engineering courses).
Learning outcomes
The main aim of the course is to provide an introduction to the design of a vast area of analog/digital interface circuits and systems: sensors, trasducers, wireless and wireline front-ends, electro-optical front-ends, etc...
At the end of the course the students will be able to identify the main type and architectures of filters (including equalizers) and analog/digital, digital/analog converters used in these systems.
They will be able to provide the general guidelines for the selection and design of the appropriate type and architecture of filters and analog/digital converter architectures based on the specifications of the analog/digital interface to be implemented. They will also have the tools to study and develop new architectures using the most advanced CAD tools and techniques.
Course contents
The course is structured in two parts: the first part is dedicated to the design of the main types of analog integrated filters, the second part provides an introduction to the design of the main architectures of D / A and A / D converters.
Lectures are complemented by the laboratories, which address the analysis and design issues, at the architectural and circuit-level, with the help of CAD tools. The various projects carried out in laboratories cover the area of A / D and D / A converters and different types of integrated filters, such as SC, and RC active gm-C.

Analog Filters

This part of the course deals with the design of various types of switched-capacitors and continuous-time analog filter architectures. The emphasis is on the architecture and on the key performances limitations/trade-offs. Specific circuit design examples will be discussed that are compatible with scaled CMOS VLSI implementations.

• Types of filters.
• Normalizing and and de-normalizing: scaling in frequency and impedance.
• Frequency transformation.
• Transfer function approximations: Butterworth, Chebyshev and elliptic.
• Passive networks synthesis: single-terminated and double-terminated networks.
• Active-RC type filters: biquadratic cells and ladder type filters.
• Transconductance-based Filters (gm-C)
• Switched-Capacitor Filters


A/D and D/A converters

This part of the course deals with the design of A/D and D/A converters. The emphasis is on the analysis and design of the different converter architectures and on the related performance limitations/trade-offs.

• ADC Introduction: performance metrics
• Basic building blocks: amplifiers, comparators, S / H circuits
• Flash and two-step flash architectures
• Pipeline structures
• Folding and interpolating structures
• Successive approximation converters (SAR)
• Interleaved converters
• Sigma-delta converters
• DAC Introduction: performance metrics
• D/A converters design: operating principles (scale of resistors, current division and charge division), circuit examples, yield estimation
Teaching methods
Lectures (hours/year in lecture theatre): 42
Practical class (hours/year in lecture theatre): 0
Practicals / Workshops (hours/year in Lab): 9
Lectures are carried out using overhead projector. The slides are made available to the students e prior to the lecture.
The slides from previous years are available on KIRO.
Practical activities consists in circuit simulations and are carried out with CAD software.
Reccomended or required readings
During the course the instructor will provide students with the lectures notes.

For further reference:

Kendall Su, Analog Filters, Second Edition, Kluwer Academic Publisher Group, The Netherland

B. Razavi, Principles of Data Conversion System Design, IEEE Press

M. Pelgrom, Analog-to-Digital Conversion, Third Edition, Springer
Assessment methods
The final evaluation consists of a written test followed by oral discussion. The test consists of a few circuit analysis exercises which provide an evaluation of the design skills and 5 multiple-choice questions that covers all the major subject areas of the course. The final score is based 50% on the exercise and 50% on the questions. There is no threshold to be admitted to the oral exam.
Further information
Information on course contents are available on the KIRO platform:

http://elearning2.unipv.it/ingegneria/course/view.php?id=9
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