CAREER: Digital Signal Conditioning Techniques to Improve Integrated Circuit Design Performance

这项研究的目标是开发对无线通信、传感器网络、健康和生物技术应用的发展至关重要的高性能模拟/混合信号集成电路。该方法是使用数字逻辑中实现的信号处理算法来微妙地修改模拟信号的统计特性，使得不可避免的晶体管非线性和制造工艺变化不会降低电路性能。其智力优势在于，它是一种很有前途的、根本不同的方法，它不依赖于粗暴的电路优化，而是应用优雅的信号处理原理来提高电路性能。它为轻松的模拟电路设计折衷了算法复杂性，从而减少了功耗、芯片面积、设计时间，并提供了更高的性能和制造良率。该项目的更广泛影响有三个方面。这将有助于巩固加州作为无线通信、传感器网络和消费电子行业技术领先者的地位。其次，它将通过提供专门从这些群体招聘的研究生和暑期实习生来参与拟议的项目，从而鼓励来自代表性不足群体的学生从事高级工程职业。第三，教育活动解决了改变电路设计教育理念的需要。通过培训未来的电路设计人员了解电路设计实践和信号处理理论之间的基本相互作用，它将使他们更好地准备好面对集成电路设计的直接挑战，并适应即将到来的从微电子到新技术的演变。

The objective of this research is to develop high performance analog/mixed-signal integrated circuits that are crucial to the advancement of wireless communication, sensor network, health, and biotech applications. The approach is to use signal processing algorithms implemented in digital logic to subtly modify the statistical properties of the analog signals such that inevitable transistor nonlinearity and manufacturing process variability do not degrade circuit performance.The intellectual merit is that it is a promising, fundamentally different approach that does not depend on brute circuit optimization but instead applies elegant signal processing principles to improve circuit performance. It trades off algorithmic complexity for relaxed analog circuit design thereby reducing power consumption, die area, design time, and offering higher performance and fabrication yields.The broader impacts of the project are three fold. It will help perpetuate California's position as a technology leader in the wireless communication, sensor network, and consumer electronics industries. Second, it will encourage students from underrepresented groups to take up advanced engineering careers by providing graduate students and summer interns recruited specifically from such groups to work on the proposed project. Third, the educational activity addresses the need for a change in the philosophy of circuit design education. By training future circuit designers in the fundamental interplay between circuit design practice and signal processing theory, it will better prepare them to face the immediate challenges of integrated circuit design, and to adapt to its impending evolution from microelectronics into newer technologies.