Analog approach to mixed analog-digital circuit simulation

Abstract

Logic simulation of digital circuits is a well explored research area. Most up-to-date CAD tools for digital circuits simulation use an event driven, selective trace algorithm and Hardware Description Languages (HDL), e.g. the VHDL. This techniques enable simulation of mixed circuits, as well, where an analog part is connected to the digital one through D/A and A/D converters. The event-driven mixed simulation applies a unified, digital-circuits dedicated method to both digital and analog subsystems. In recent years HDL techniques have been also applied to mixed domains, as e.g. in the VHDL-AMS. This paper presents an approach dual to the event-driven one, where an analog part together with a digital one and with converters is treated as the analog subsystem and is simulated by means of circuit simulation techniques. In our problem an analog solver used yields some numerical problems caused by nonlinearities of digital elements. Efficient methods for overriding these difficulties have been proposed.