Some Basic Concepts of Analog IC Design (©Fuding Ge)

Some Basic Concepts you should know before job hounting:

You should grasp the following concepts:

• Gain, (how to improve gain?)

• Bandwidth, (how to improve bandwidth?)

• Feedback,(Stability is a must ask question! Know pole, zero, gain and phase margin!)

• Slew rate,(How to improve slew rate?)

• Offset,(how to eliminate offset? Chopper stabilized circuits, autozero)

• Noise,(what is thermal, flick, shot noise? What are the noises of BJT and MOSFET? (Tell me one way to reduce flick noise)

• Compensation (what is Miller, lead and Lag compensation? Know what is Miller Effects).

• Layout (centroid, interdigital) (how to improve the match of current mirror, differential pairs?

Remember: Same Structure (poly-poly not one is poly-poly another is poly-metal), same temperature, same Shape and size, same orientation (current flow parallel), same surroundings(dummy transistors) and Common-centroid geometry (fingers, interdigitated fingers, what is the purpose of breaking into fingers?))

Suggested Reading: Koen Lampaert, Georges Gielen and Willy Sansen, Analog Layout Generation for Performance and Manufacturability, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999

• Thermal resistance (basic calculation).

• Filter

• Oscillator

• Peak detector

• Frequency divider

• Bandgap Reference

• You also need to know a little bit about testing, for example DFT.

(I will later provide more details for each of the concepts.)

Some Basic Concepts of Analog IC Design (©Fuding Ge)