EFFICIENT SYMBOLIC COMPUTATION OF APPROXIMATED SMALL-SIGNAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ANALOG INTEGRATED-CIRCUITS

A symbolic analysis tool is presented that generates simplified symbol ic expressions for the small-signal characteristics of large analog in tegrated circuits, The expressions are approximated while they are com puted, so that only those terms are generated which remain in the fina l expression, This principle causes drastic savings in CPU time and me mory, compared with previous symbolic analysis tools, In this way, the maximum size of circuits that can be analyzed, is largely increased, By taking into account a range for the value of a circuit parameter ra ther than one single number, the generated expressions are also more g enerally valid, Mismatch handling is explicitly taken into account in the algorithm, The capabilities of the new tool are illustrated with s everal experimental results.