CAREER: Advanced interface circuits for communication systems through architecture, circuit, and software innovation

未来建立低成本、高性能通信系统的努力将因开发适合其需要的新接口电路的高成本而受到阻碍。这些接口电路充当在本质上是模拟的真实世界信号和系统核心的数字处理引擎之间的中介。当前的接口电路在其实现中主要是模拟的，这使得它们的性能对制造它们的工艺中的制造变化以及由在同一芯片上操作的数字电路产生的噪声高度敏感。这种敏感性的影响在于，接口电路必须为它们实现的工艺而定制，不能容易地与它们所连接的数字处理器集成，并且通常在它们服务于各种应用的能力方面非常受限。由此导致的这些电路的便携性的缺乏导致了高的开发成本，因为它们通常必须从头开始重新设计以用于新的系统。所提出的研究的目标是开发能够在各种制造工艺和应用中降低杠杆的新的接口电路体系结构，并由此显著降低它们在未来通信应用中的实现成本。这一目标将通过用数字电路替换接口中的模拟电路的显著部分来实现，所述数字电路通过将作为本发明的一部分开发的信号处理技术来实现所需的功能。这种实现原理将导致与今天使用的接口体系结构显著不同，将开发新的仿真模型和软件工具，以促进探索新的系统架构及其伴随电路的过程。仿真建模将集中于获得数字电路仿真器中模拟元件的准确行为级描述，这将允许直接评估不同信号处理算法对整体系统性能的影响。软件开发将导向更好地集成系统级和晶体管级仿真工具，麻省理工学院将开发一门新的教育课程，传授本研究计划中所需的知识和工具。该课程将教授模拟和数字元件的高速电路技术。将通过数学分析和交互式数值模拟相结合的方式，利用自定义模型和软件工具来探索系统级概念。它将研究电路限制对系统性能的影响，并探索在电路和系统设计之间进行ITER设计以实现最佳系统性能的方法。通过麻省理工学院的S开放课程计划，课程材料和软件将提供给其他大学和行业。通过开放课程软件计划的课程分科将允许来自不同种族、经济和地理背景的学生和行业设计师获得最先进的接口电路设计技术和工具。

Efforts to create low cost,high performance communication systems in the future will be chal-lenged by the high cost of developing new interface circuits that are suited to their needs.Theseinterface circuits serve as the intermediary between real world signals,which are analog in nature,and the digital processing engines at the core of the system.Current interface circuits are primarilyanalog in their implementation,which makes their performance highly sensitive to manufacturingvariations in the process they are fabricated in,and to noise generated by digital circuits thatoperate on the same chip.The impact of this sensitivity is that interface circuits must be customdesigned for the process they are implemented in,cannot be easily integrated with their adjoiningdigital processor,and are often very restricted in their ability to serve a wide variety of applica-tions.The resulting lack of portability of these circuits leads to high development costs since theygenerally must be redesigned from scratch for new systems.The goal of the proposed research is to develop new interface circuit architectures that can beleveraged over a wide variety of fabrication processes and applications,and thereby dramaticallyreduce the cost of their implementation in future communication applications.This goal will beachieved by replacing a signi .cant portion of the analog circuitry in the interface with digitalcircuits that realize the required functionality through signal processing techniques that will bedeveloped as part of this e .ort.This implementation philosophy will lead to dramatically di .erentinterface architectures than in use today,and will provide new insights into the tradeo .s betweenusing analog versus digital circuitry for given function and performance requirements.New simulation models and software tools will be developed to facilitate the process of exploringnew system architectures and their accompanying circuits.The simulation modeling e .ort willbe focused on obtaining accurate behavioral level descriptions of analog components in digitalcircuit simulators,which will allow straightforward evaluation of the impact of di .erent signalprocessing algorithms on the overall system performance.The software development e .ort will bedirected toward better integrating system level and transistor level simulation tools,and providingestimation of the impact of extrinsic factors such as substrate noise.A new educational course will be developed at MIT that passes on the knowledge and tools ac-quired in this research program.The class will teach high speed circuit techniques for both analogand digital components.System level concepts will be explored through a combination of mathe-matical analysis and interactive numerical simulation using the custom models and software tools.It will examine the impact of circuit limitations on system performance,and explore ways of iter-ating between circuit and system designs to achieve the best overall system performance.ThroughMIT 's OpenCourseWare initiative,the course materials and software will be made available toother universities as well as industry.Dissemination of the course through the OpenCourseWareprogram will allow students and industry designers from a variety of ethnic,economic,and geo-graphic backgrounds to have access to state of the art techniques and tools for interface circuitdesign.