CHAPTER Introduction to Analog Design 1.1 m Why Analog? ‘Weare surrounded by “digital” devices: digital cameras, digital TVs, digital communications (cell phones and WiFi), the Internet, etc. Why, then, are we still interested in analog circuits? Isn’t analog design old and out of fashion? Will there even be jobs for analog designers ten years from now” Interestingly, these questions have been raised about every five years over the past 50 years, but mostly by those who either did not understand analog design or did not want to deal with its challenges. In this section, we learn that analog design is still essential, relevant, and challenging and will remain so for decades to come. 1.1.1 Sensing and Processing Signals Many electronic systems perform (wo principal functions: they sense (receive) a signal and subsequently ‘process and extract information from it. Your cell phone receives a radio-frequency (RF) signal and, after processing it, provides voice or data information. Similarly, your digital camera senses the light intensity ‘emitted from various parts of an object and processes the result to extract an image We know intuitively that the complex task of processing is preferably carried out in the digital domain, In fact, we may wonder whether we can directly digitize the signal and avoid any operations inthe analog domain. Figure 1.1 shows an example where the RF signal received by the antenna is digitized by an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and processed enttely inthe digital domain, Would this scenario send analog and RF designers to the unemployment office? Antenna Analeg-to-Digh alylyya Ler RF Signal Figure 1.1. Hypothetical RF receiver with direct signal digitization, Digital Signal ProcessorChap. 1 Introduction to Analog Design ‘The answer is an emphatic no, An ADC that could digitize the minuscule RF signal! would consume ‘much more power than today's cell phone receivers. Furthermore, even if this approach were seriously considered, only analog designers would be able to develop the ADC, The key point offered by this example is that the sensing interface still demands high-performance analog design. Action Potential @ Ampliier > [aoe : = LY : Eh forentater Amplitir i me © Figure 1.2. (a) Voliage waveform generated asa result af neural activity, (b) use of probes to measure action potentials, and (c) processing and transmission of signals. Another interesting example of sensing challenges arses in the study of the brain signals. Bach ime a seuron in your brain “firs,” generates an elecuie pulse with aheight of a few millivolts anda duration of afew hundred microseconds (Fig. 12a). To monitor bran activites, a neural recording system may employ tens of “probes” (electrodes) [Fig.1.2(0)], each sensing a series of pulses. The signal produced by each probe must now be amplified, digitized, and transmitted wirelessly so that the patient is free to move around (Fig. .2(¢)]. The sensing, processing, and transmission electronics in this envionment ust consume alow amount of power for Wo xeasons: (1) to permit the use ofa small batery for days at ‘weeks, and (2) to minimize the rise in the chip's temperature, which could otherwise damage the patient's tissue, Among the functions shown in Fig. 1.26). the amplifiers, the ADCS, and the RF tansmatter—all analog circuits consume most of the power: 1.1.2 When Digital Signals Become Analog The use of analog circuits is not limited to analog signals. Ifa digital signal is so small and/or so distozted that a digital gate cannot interpret it correctly, then the analog designer must step in, For example, consider along USB cable carrying data rate of hundreds of megabits per second between two laptops. As shown, in Fig. 1.3, Laptop I delivers the data to the cable in the form of a sequence of ONEs and ZERO, "And withstand large unwanted signalsSec. 1.1 Why Analog? Laptop 1 Figure 1.3. Equalization to compensate for high-frequency attenuation in a USB cable ‘Unfortunately, the cable exhibits a finite bandwidth, attenuating high frequencies and distorting the data as it reaches Laptop 2. This device must now perform sensing and processing, the former requiring an analog circuit (called an “equalizer”) that corrects the distortion. For example, since the cable attenuates high frequencies, we may design the equalizer o amplify such frequencies, as shown conceptually by the 1/|H | plot in Fig. 1.3. ‘The reader may wonder whether the task of equalization in Fig. 1.3 could be performed in the digital domain. That is, could we directly digitize the received distorted signal, digitally correct for the cable's limited bandwidth, and then carry out the standard USB signal processing? Indeed, this is possible if the ADC required here demands less power and less complexity than the analog equalizer. Following a detailed analysis, the analog designer decides which approach to adopi, but we intuitively know that at very ‘high data rates, e.g, tens of gigabits per second, an analog equalizer proves more efficient than an ADC. ‘The above equalization task exemplifies a general trend in electronics: at lower speeds, it is more efficient to digitize the signal and perform the required function(s) in the digital domain, whereas at higher speeds, we implement the function(s) in the analog domain. The speed boundary between these two paradigms depends on the nature of the problem, but it has risen aver time. 1.1.3 Analog Design Is in Great Demand Despite tremendous advances in semiconductor technology, analog design continues to face new chal- lenges, thus calling for innovations. As a gauge of the demand for analog circuits, we can consider the papers published by industry and academia at circuits conferences and see what percentage fall in our domain. Figure 1.4 plots the number of analog papers published at the International Solid-State Circuits 225 mm Total 200}- = Analog 175}- 150| 125| 100| 75 50 25} Number of Analog Papers at ISSCC 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Year Figure 1.4 Number of analog papers published at the ISSCC in recent yearsChap. 1 Introduction to Analog Design Conference (ISSCC) in recent years, where “analog” is defined as a paper requiting the knowledge inthis book. We observe that the majority of the papers invalve analog design. This is tue even though analog circuits are typically quite a lot less complex than digital circuits; an ADC contains several thousand Uwansistors whereas a microprocessor employs billions. 1.1.4 Analog Design Challenges ‘Today's analog designers must deal with interesting and difficult problems. Our study of devices and. circuits in this book will systematically illustrate various issues, but itis helpful to take a brief look at what lies ahead, Transistor Imperfections As a result of scaling, MOS transistors continue to become faster, but at the cost of their “analog” properties. For example, the maximum voltage gain that a tansistor can provide declines with each new generation of CMOS technology. Moreover, a wansistor's characteristics may depend on its surroundings, Le. the size, shape, and distance of other components around it on the chip. Declining Supply Voltages As a result of device scaling, the supply voltage of CMOS eircuits has inevitably fallen from about 12 V in the 1970s to about 0.9 V today. Many cizcuit configurations have not survived this supply reduction and have been discarded. We continue to seek new topologies that operate well at low voltages. Power Consumption The semiconductor industry, more than ever, is striving for low-power design. This effore applies both to portable devices—so as to increase their battery lifetime—and to larger systems—so as to reduce the cost of heat removal and ease their drag on the earth's resources. MOS device scaling dizeetly lowers the power consumption of digital cizcuits, but its effect on analog ciccuits is much more complicated. Circuit Complexity Today's analog circuits may contain tens of thousands of transistors, demanding long and tedious simulations. Indeed, modern analog designers must be as adept at SPICE as at higher- level simulators such as MATLAB. PVT Variations Many device and circuit parameters vary with the fabrication process, supply voltage, and ambient temperature, We denote these effects by PVT and design circuits such that their performance is acceptable for a specified range of PVT variations. For example, the supply voltage may vary from 1 V (00.95 V and the temperature from 0° to 80°, Robust analog design in CMOS technology is achallenging task because device parameters vary significantly across PVT, 1.2 m Why Integrated? “The idea of placing multiple electronic devices on the same substrate was conceived in the late 1950s. In 60 years, the technology has evolved from producing simple chips containing a handful of components to fabricating flash drives with one illion transistors as well as microprocessors comprising several billion devices. As Gordon Moore (one of the founders of Intel) predicted in the early 1970s, the number of Uwansistors per chip has continued to double approximately every one and a half years. At the same time, the minimum dimension of transistors has dropped from about 25 jm in 1960 to about 12 am in the yeat 2015, resulting in a wemendous improvement in the speed of integrated cizcuits. Driven primatily by the memory and microprocessor market, inegrated-circuit technologies have also embraced analog design, affording a complexity, speed, and precision that would be impossible to achieve using discrete implementations. We can no longer build a discrete prototype to predict the behavior and performance of moder analog circuits.