An equation-based optimization approach for analog circuit design

An efficient approach and an associated tool to optimize the performance of integrated analog circuits were described. The main objectives with the approach are to significantly speed up the design process and to obtain better overall, possibly optimal, circuit performance compared to a manual, simulation-based, approach. In order to achieve good agreement with circuit simulators high accuracy transistor models are used. A key feature is the automatic generation of the performance metrics and cost function from the circuit netlist. As a design example we select a current-mirror operational transconductance amplifier.