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Engineering Online

ECE 714 Adv. Integrated Circuit Design: Data Converters

3 Credit Hours

This course is a graduate level course in Analog-to-digital converters. Students will learn the fundamentals of sampling and the translation of signals form the digital to analog and analog to digital domains. Students will learn the basic circuits unique to data converters and how they impact design. Students will learn to a design digital-to-analog converter as well as 3 ADCs: Pipeline, Sigma-Delta and Successive-approximation. After completion of this course you will have the background to successfully design an ADC and DAC.

Prerequisite

Analog Electronics (NC State ECE 511)

Course Objectives

The objectives of this course are:

  • Understand signal sampling and conversion of information from analog to digital domains.
  • Learn to design analog circuits for precision amplification, sampling and measurement.
  • Learn to design switched-capacitor circuits
  • Learn VerilogA behavioral modeling
  • Learn architectures of modern ADC and DAC
  • Learn how to use behavioral modeling to design and simulated complex ADCs
  • Learn how to work in a small team to design a complete IC

Course Outcomes

  • Understand the fundamentals of sampling and the translation of signals form the digital to analog and analog to digital domains.
  • Know the  basic circuits unique to data converters and how they impact design.
  • Have designed your own  digital-to-analog converter as well as 3 ADCs: Pipeline, Sigma-Delta and Successive-approximation.
  • Have completed a  design of  a mixed-signal IC using transistor level design and VerilogA modeling.

Course Requirements

Course will consist of:

  • Weekly lectures with short quizzes (15%)
  • Weekly guided design projects done with instructor. Example is a design of a sucesssive approximation digital-to-analog converter (DAC) (30%)
  • Two mini-exams (25%)
  • Final small group project (last 4 weeks of class) (30%)

Textbook Information

No textbook is required, however the following may be helpful. Note the first two are available online at NCSU library, so no book needs to be purchased.

  • F. Maloberti, Data Converters, Springer (2005) (e-resource NCSU Library)
  • A. Ali, High Speed Data Converters (Materials, Circuits and Devices) (e-resource NCSU Library)
  • David A. Johns, Kenneth W. Martin, Analog Integrated Circuit Design, 2nd Edition, 2012 (reference, not required)
  • A. V. Oppenheim and A. S. Willsky, Signals and Systems, 1983 or recent edition. (reference, not required)

Computer and Software Requirements

You will need to access NCSU Cadence software through the NCSU VPN. You should already have accessed NCSU Cadence before and know how to use Cadence to do basic design.

Updated 07/16/2020