Design and Layout Automation for LDO Regulators

Abstract

Analog design has always been a more involved process than digital design. it takes to longer to master so it comes the importance of Analog Design Automation (ADA) to short the time to market and to reach to the optimum design at the same time. However the researches in this field are still not efficient enough to replace the manual design. This thesis aims to introduce a design automation tool for low dropout voltage regulators in both circuit and layout regulation by dividing the circuit to its building blocks and introduces a macro model in order to speed up the optimization process. Finally it compares between the time effort and the accuracy between the manual design and the automation approach. Key words: CMOS, analog design, software, LDO, automation, pass transistor, SKILL, ocean, operational amplifier, simulation analysis, figure of merit, layout, inter-digitation, common centroid.