Design of Reusable CMOS OTAs using CAD Tools

Jos Luis Chvez-Hurtado 1, Esteban Martnez-Guerrero 2 and Jos Ernesto Rayas-Snchez 3

Department of Electronics, Systems and Informatics, ITESO (Instituto Tecnolgico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente), Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, 45604 Mexico
1 2

josechavez@iteso.mx
3

emguerrero@iteso.mx erayas@iteso.mx

In recent years it has been reported some works on automation analog design approaches [1-8], each of them having different advantages and limitations. In this work, we propose a methodology for analog circuit design reuse based on the retargeting analog blocks for each new set of specifications, to assemble complex analog circuits that can be used for different applications. To this purpose, we have developed an interactive optimization algorithm to find the best analog building block in different fabrication technologies accordingly to the design specifications. The long-term main objective of this approach is to facilitate the design of complex analog functions. In this work the efficacy Keywords Design automation, CAD, circuit optimization, of our algorithm is illustrated by designing one of the most widely used analog building blocks: Operational FDFC OTA with CMFB, analog cells. Transconductance Amplifier (OTA) circuits. I. INTRODUCTION In Section II the proposed structure of reusable analog cells The complexity of integrated electronic circuits being design is explained. Section III is focused on finding OTAs designed for nowadays applications is continuously increasing. performance limits for classical OTA topologies by SPICE The advances in process technology makes possible to design simulations, in Section IV a practical design example of a mixed-signal integrated systems on a chip (SoC). Most parts Fully Differential Folded Cascode (FDFC) OTA with of these SoCs are completely digital rather than analog. This Common-Mode Feedback (CMFB) is presented, and finally is encouraged by that fact that logic synthesis, layout and some concluding remarks for this work are given. verification of digital circuits are highly suited for design II. APPROACH FOR DESIGNING REUSABLE ANALOG CELLS automation methodologies, which make easier for the designer Figure 1 shows our approach for designing reusable analog to implement the required functions and reduce the overall time-to-market. However, SoC designs need to include at least cells as applied to OTA cells. A mathematical optimizer some analog interfacing functions, whose design automation integrated to a circuit simulator is used as the core of this lags behind its digital counterpart and becomes in many cases design tool. The mathematical optimizer receives the design a limiting factor in accelerating SoC time-to-market [1, 2]. specifications and makes the calls to OTA library, technology Analog design automation is more difficult than digital design library, performance library and design constraints blocks for because analog cells are more influenced by noise and by the circuit sizing, by means of an iterative process, until the parasitic effects from layout [3]. On the other hand, as SoCs circuit achieves the required design specifications and delivers becomes larger, a practical way to efficiently design such the best OTA topology in a specific fabrication technology. dense SoCs is by embedding cores, also called intellectual property (IP) blocks, on these chips. Ideally, these cores Technology Performance Design OTA Library Library Library Constraints should be reusable, pre-characterized and pre-verified. This means that the same core can be used on different chip designs and in different technologies after migration. While the reusability concept is currently having some success on the digital side of mixed-signal systems, it is still extremely Mathematical Optimization and Circuit Simulation difficult to reuse an analog IP block in its current forms. To this end, analog cells would be migrated to these new Design Final Circuit technologies with minimal user intervention. While analog Specifications design automation methodologies are not yet widely accepted by analog designers, design reuse seems a viable way to efficiently design analog functions.
Abstract In this paper an automation tool is proposed for OTA designs. The core of the tool is a combination of a mathematical tool and a circuit simulator. The automation tool contains four libraries: OTA topologies, technology parameters, performance limits and design constraints. Design of typical OTA topologies can be implemented in three fabrication technologies. The user introduces OTA specifications and the automation tool looks for the best OTA structure considering the cheapest fabrication technology available in the library, and delivers a sized circuit that fulfills design specifications. Our automation tool is illustrated by a complete design flow of an FDFC with CMFB OTA in AMIS 0.5 m CMOS technology.

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The circuit simulator (WinSpice 1 ) can be settled to get responses of the optimized circuit by performing AC sweeps, DC sweeps or transient analyses. In our current implementation, the OTA Library contains circuit descriptions in netlist format of 5 typical OTA topologies: simple, balanced, Miller, Single Ended Fully Cascode (SEFC) and Fully Differential Folded Cascode (FDFC) which are widely discussed in [9]. The technology library contains the process parameters that model the CMOS transistors for the following three technologies: 0.5m, 0.35m, and 0.18m in a .LIB compatible file in order to be managed by WinSpice. These process parameters can be acquired from IC foundries (e.g. MOSIS). Finally the design constraints limit in the automation tool the maximum and minimum variation of the component values for each MOS technology To make the interactive algorithm the first step is the integration of the optimization tools with WinSPICE simulator, according to [7] and [8]. This is carried out by generating a SPICE compatible archive through the optimization tool and launching WinSpice to obtain circuit simulation results for the calculated component values. Our automation tool manipulates the Netlist, which contains the OTA topology and the optimization variables which are varied by the optimization algorithm, such us W and L of CMOS transistors, voltage sources, etc., as well as the pre-assigned parameters, such as the load capacitance, model library, etc. A second step is to determinate the OTAs performance limits for each technology process by optimizing every response of interest for the OTA, such as voltage gain (Av), bandwidth (BW), common mode rejection ratio (CMRR), power supply rejection ratio (PSRR), etc. Performance limits are stored in OTA_topology.sp file, creating a performance library for each technology process. With this library we can improve the OTA topology selection method by immediately discarding those topologies whose limits do not achieve the required design performance. The design flow of this automation algorithm (Figure 2) begins by comparing the users design specification with the performance library to select the appropriated OTA topology and technology process. The first selection criterion is the cheapest technology process (e.g. 0.5m), and if more than one OTA topology is suitable for the design specifications, then the second criterion selection is to choose the simplest one. Once an OTA topology is selected, the optimization process begins according the required specifications. It is well known that for OTA designs there is always a tradeoff between its performance variables (e.g., Av vs. BW), so even if the OTA Av limit and the OTA BW limit exceed the initial specification we can not be sure that this topology could achieve both specifications in the final design. The next OTA topology is chosen if the previous criterion does not satisfy the desired design specifications. User can also select the next technology process even if the current OTA topology achieves
1

Fig. 1: Proposed Structure for Automatic Analog Cells Design.

Fig 2 Functionality flow diagram for reusable OTA design process based on circuit optimization.

design specifications. Every time that our automation tool finishes an OTA design, the component values and the corresponding OTA performance are saved. At the end, if the automation process did not find a topology that achieves design specifications then the best circuit is delivered. Notice the runtime of the optimization algorithm does not depend of the number of topologies in the library because the automation tool selects the OTA topology from a database that has the most proximity performance to the user desired design specifications. A. Objective Function The optimization variables are assembled in a vector x, which contains suitable design parameters according the OTA topology. In our current implementation (for illustration purposes) we use only the following specifications: Avmin, BWmin PMmin, PMmax, VDCout. An error function ek(x) is defined for the k-th upper and/or lower specification. The optimal design is obtained by minimizing the following optimization problem: x * arg min max e1 x , e 2 x ,..., e 5 x
x

where x* is the optimal solution found, and the objective function (OF) corresponds to a minimax formulation expressed in terms of the desired specifications, as follows: e1(x) = 1 Av(x)/Avmin e2(x) = 1 BW(x)/BWmin e3(x) = 1 PM(x)/PMmin e4(x) = 1 PMmax/PM(x) e5(x) = 1 VDC(x)/VDCout where PM(x) (Phase Margin), Av(x) (OTA Gain), BW(x) (Bandwidth) and VDC(x) (DC output voltage) contain the corresponding circuit simulated responses. If the value of the objective function is less than zero at a solution x*, it means that all the specifications are satisfied at that point.

WinSpice, Ver. 1.04.05, Dep. EECS., U. of California, Berkeley (http://www.winspice.com/)

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B. Optimization_Algorithm We have explored the three global optimization algorithms available in Matlab toolbox 2 : Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA) and Pattern Search (PS). The three algorithms yield similar results, however the PS algorithm needs less time to achieve the same response, so that we incorporated this optimization algorithm. The optimization algorithm receives the seed values for the circuit design and the OTA design constraints, and iteratively calls the objective function described before. When the optimization algorithm finds the global minimum of the objective function, we check for the sign of the objective function, if it is positive it means that at least one specification was not achieved and other OTA topology is chosen. If the sign is negative it means that all design specifications were achieved and this circuit is delivered as the final circuit. III. PERFORMANCE LIMITS FOR TYPICAL OTA TOPOLOGIES In a traditional design procedure we solve equations related to a specific OTA topology for circuit sizing. This is easy for simple topologies, but this becomes very time consuming, tedious, and error prone. With an automation tool these problems are alleviated and minimum time is spent on designs. Here we apply the implemented algorithm to find the best performance of a typical OTA topology. Table I shows the OTA design constraints for each technology. Tables II and III summarize the main characteristics of 5 OTA topologies. OTA performance limits were obtained for maximum gain or maximum bandwidth in 0.5um, 0.35um and 0.18um technologies, and also it can be extended to other technologies and other design specification such as: PSRR, CMRR, Slew Rate or power consumption optimized. The value of the load capacitance was 1pF, a PM of 60 +/- 1 and a VDCout of 0v +/- 0.01v. As expected, an increased Av and a reduction in BW for complex OTA topologies is obtained (see tables II and III). These results allow us to choose the adequate OTA topology for a determined application. IV. CMFB FDFC OTA DESIGN A FDFC OTA with CMFB [10] (Fig. 3) was designed using our automation tool for Av > 50dB, BW > 800MHz, 55 PM 65, CL = 1pF, Isource = 28.43uA and Vcm = 0v. The initial values of transistor sizes for this OTA topology were the minimum allowed for AMIS 0.5m process (Table I). Note that it is not necessary to have an initial circuit with a specific performance; the automation tool can start a new design from a very poor design, because it is based on global optimization methods. After approximately 1 hour of the iterative process, the optimizer algorithm gives transistor sizes for this topology (Table IV), then by means of WinSpice simulator we can verify the performance of this circuit. This optimized circuit was also simulated using Spectre from
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TABLE I OTA DESIGN CONSTRAINTS

Vdd 0.50m 0.35m 0.18m 2.5 1.5 0.9

Vss -2.5 -1.5 -0.9

Wmax 300m 300m 300m

Wmin 2.1m 1.5m 1m

Lmax 2.5m 1.75m 0.9m

Lmin 0.6m 0.35m 0.18m

TABLE II OTA OPTIMIZATION FOR MAXIMUM GAIN

Topology: 0.50m Avd (dB) BW (MHz) 0.35m Avd (dB) BW (MHz) 0.18m Avd (dB) BW (MHz)

Simple 50.79 38.02 43.42 158.48 41.21 147.91

Balanced 36.01 158.49 35.81 72.44 37.05 93.33

Miller 71.65 5.75 58.20 436.51 64.41 42.66

SEFC 55.24 30.20 40.05 134.89 40.06 134.90

FDFC 142.18 6.46 96.46 165.95 96.46 165.96

TABLE III OTA OPTIMIZATION FOR MAXIMUM BANDWIDTH

Topology: 0.50m Avd (dB) BW (MHz) 0.35m Avd (dB) BW (MHz) 0.18m Avd (dB) BW (MHz)

Simple 31.98 562.34 39.06 549.54 28.20 5888.4

Balanced 36.01 158.49 13.36 501.19 12.278 1445.4

Miller 43.54 501.19 58.20 436.51 32.37 933.25

SEFC 43.15 204.17 32.82 446.68 32.82 446.68

FDFC 95.15 245.47 88.32 724.44 85.12 1412.5

Fig. 3: Schematics of the FDFC OTA with CMFB (dotted square).

CadenceTM3 and minimum variation on its performance was

Matlab, Genetic Algorithm and Direct Search ToolboxTM 2, users guide, The Math Works, 2008.

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TABLE IV OPTIMAL VALUES FOUND FOR THE FDFC OTA WITH CMFB Transistor Optimized W and L M1, M2 M3, M4 M5, M6 M7, M8 M9, M10 Mtail M11, M12 M13, M14,M15, M16 M17, M18 Fig. 4: Layout of FDFC OTA (left) with CMFB (rigth) circuit designed using Virtuoso Layout from Cadence TM. Component Vcasp Vcasn Vp Vn R 264.625m / 1.5m 44.7000m / 0.6m 142.218m / 0.6m 33.7500m / 1.5m 44.8154m / 0.6m 174.100m / 0.6m 38.1000m / 0.6m 192.100m / 0.6m 155.100m / 0.6m Optimized value -0.4095v 0.6240v -1.3198v 1.3500v 40 Ohms

TABLE V PERFORMANCE OF THE OPTIMIZED FDFC OTA WITH CMFB PRE AND POST LAYOUT SIMULATION Pre Layout Post Layout Av 57.63 dB 57.25 dB BW 851.1 MHz 724.4 MHz 57.55 58.54 PM 0.1624 w 0.1578 w POW 50.34 dB 50.50 dB PSRRVDD 51.98 dB 52.22 dB PSRRVSS 2244.8 v/s 2010.4 v/s SRRISE 2109.6 v/s 1871.6 v/s SRFALL

Fig. 5: Bode plot of FDFC OTA with CMFB for Seed Values (Dotted line, Av = -30.63dB) after Optimization (Dashed line, Av = 57.63dB, BW = 851.138MHz and PM = 57.55) and postlayout simulation (Solid line, Av = 57.25dB, BW = 724.4MHz and PM = 58.54).

observed. The masks for fabrication of this circuit were designed using Virtuoso Layout from CadenceTM and AMIS 0.5m process from NCSU PDK4, applying an interdigitation technique to minimize parasitic effects (Fig.4). Physical verification was performed using DIVA tools. On Fig. 5 AC response of FDFC OTA with CMFB is presented before and after simulation. As can be noticed from this figure, design specifications are fulfilled (that is: Av > 50dB, BW > 800MHz, and 55 PM 65) and also a minor parasitic effect in postlayout simulation is observed due to the layout technique. Other performance results (POW, PSRR, and SR) of FDFC OTA can be also checked in Table V. V. CONCLUSIONS We presented a CAD tool for designing reusable OTAs applicable for three basic technology processes. Our design tool is capable to choose the best OTA topology for a given technology according to the desired design specifications. To illustrate our tool, a complete design flow was carried out for an FDFC with CMFB OTA, obtaining a solution that optimally satisfied some basic design specifications and yielded good agreement between prelayout and postlayout performance due to suitably applied layout techniques.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors thank the Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) for financial support (Grant 90750). University licences of Cadence tools and licensed Matlab tool box were used for this work. REFERENCES
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