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Research Overview: Platform-based Design of Low Power Analog/Mixed-signal/RF Systems
This work focuses on the Platform-Based Design (PBD) of robust low-power analog/mixed-signal/RF systems. Design optimization is efficiently performed using behavioral models at a higher abstraction level while considering architectural constraints and implementation costs at the lower levels. In particular, we apply the above methodology to wireless communication domain to achieve an effective design space exploration and improve the state-of-the-art wireless design techniques.
As a concrete case, the design of a multi-band OFDM ultra-wideband (MB-OFDM UWB) receiver is challenging when we target to minimize power consumption while providing enough robustness against the nearby wireless interference because of the complex trade-offs that should be made to reach a satisfactory solution. A weak UWB signal has to be successfully received and processed in the presence of interference as strong as 65 dB above the UWB signal. In general, a complex analog/RF design as this is carried out by trial-and-error and is rarely optimized. In this work, by mapping the system-level performance requirements to circuit-level platforms and using a stack of abstracted models, we obtain an interference-robust receiver front-end design consuming 10.8mW in a 0.13¦Ìm CMOS technology, a 22.3% savings of power compared to a manually optimized design.
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