ACTIF: a high-level power estimation tool for Analog Continuous-Time Filters

A tool is presented that gives a high-level estimation of the power consumed by an analog continuous-time OTA-C filter when given only high-level input parameters such as dynamic range and signal swing. When used in combination with estimators for other building blocks (ADC's, DAC's, mixers, ...) a truly high-level analog system exploration becomes feasible such as needed for architectural exploration of telecom systems. In literature only fundamental relations exist for analog filters, that predict the power with an error of orders of magnitude, which makes them hard to use in real system design. ACTIF combines existing filter synthesis methods with new behavioral models for transconductance stages in a novel way to obtain an optimized high-level yet accurate power estimation. To verify the presented approach, two recently published design examples are compared with the results from ACTIF.