This course discusses the theory and the application of basic structured design techniques to the transistor-level design of application-specific amplifiers.
The main goal of this course is to provide the student with the essential knowledge and skills to design an amplifier in BiCMOS or CMOS technology according to given specifications and to motivate and fully understand all design steps involved.
After the course the student is able to:
Translate an application description of an amplifier into a specification comprising, a functional specification, specification of performance measures, operational conditions and cost factors.
Design a proper amplifier concept based on source and load specification.
Evaluate the amplifying capabilities of basic amplifier stages such as CS and CE stage for a given technology
Identify performance aspects such as noise, signal handling capability and bandwidth of basic amplifier stages such as CS and CE stage for a given technology
Scale devices and select their operating conditions to influence these performance aspects
To apply error reduction techniques, such as compensation, balancing and (local) negative feedback to improve the performance of these basic amplifying stages
To motivate the decision to use multi-stage amplifiers
To design (high-performance) multi-stage amplifiers using error reduction techniques such as compensation, balancing and feedback.
Setup design considerations for noise and take adequate design decisions
Setup design considerations for signal handling capability and power efficiency and take adequate design decisions
Setup design considerations for frequency response and take adequate design decisions
Setup design considerations for weak distortion and take adequate design decisions
Setup design considerations for biasing and design and implement proper biasing circuitry
Evaluate the performance versus requirements of the final design and propose options for improvement
Select proper models and design verification tools for each design step
Write a design report in which all design steps are motivated, and the performance is evaluated and explained.
