A Hierarchical Performance Equation Library for Basic Op-Amp Design

This article presents a new approach to automate the setup of the design equations of the manual analog design process. Its main contribution is a comprehensive hierarchical performance equation library (HPEL) for op-amps. The HPEL makes the setup of design equations independent of the topology. Based on the library and the functional block recognition method in Abel et al. (2020), analytical performance models for various op-amp topologies are automatically instantiated. The method is currently designed for basic op-amps. In this article, we use the method to size different op-amp topologies. Experimental results featuring four circuits are presented. The HPEL has also been integrated into a structural synthesis method featuring several thousand op-amp topologies (Abel and Graeb, 2021).