الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Linear voltage regulators are indispensable Analog blocks that provide a stable (reg- ulated) power supply voltage independent of load impedance, input-voltage variations, temperature and time. It also acts as a bulwark for the system against uctuations in the main supply rails. Low drop-out voltage regulators (LDOs) are a class of linear regulators that are distinguished by their ability to maintain regulation with small dierences between supply voltage and load voltage. LDOs are imperative in modern SOC given the con- tinuous down scaling of the supply voltage and the SOC inherently noisy environment. Owing to the nature of LDO as being an analog block, the design of LDO is not a straightforward task. Analog design is an arduous process involving lots of trades os, design variables and degrees of freedom. Finding a design point that meets all the specications is intricate and even nding an optimum design point is not guaranteed. Analog design ow has been the same for the last three decades, Designers rely mainly on intuition and experience along with an extensive use of simulators going back and forth until a design point meets all the required specications. For long, a clear concise path for systematically designing analog circuits was lost, leading to uninformed design decisions and sup-optimal designs. In this thesis, the Analog design of LDOs is automated with the aid of precomputed look-up tables and an accurate symbolic solver. The gm/ID methodology is extended to allow for capturing the layout-dependent eects in the Lookup tables. The used au- tomation ow allows design space visualization and exploration in a systematic manner 1 2 owing to the usage of the gm/ID methodology and takes PVT variations into consid- eration. A design point fullling the required specications can be chosen and veried against the simulator. In addition, the automation ow is made more generic such that the only required entry from the designer to automate an LDO topology is a netlist with minimum restrictions. |