Performance estimator for an analog design automation system using EKV-modeled analog circuits

Design automation is an attractive solution for improving efficiency and productivity in the analog domain. This paper describes a novel method for designing a performance estimator (PE) tool to increase the speed of an analog design automation flow presented by Balkir et al. (2003). The method is based on using the analytical equations of the EKV transistor model to estimate the behavior of some basic analog blocks and later on utilizing the block estimations to arrive at the final circuit performance estimation. Finally, we apply the PE to various basic analog blocks and circuits to observe the effectiveness of the method.