Adaptive techniques for analog and mixed signal integrated circuits

Modern electronic systems and circuits' designers are facing the increasingly difficult task of designing systems that have to handle very tight sets of specifications, or even multiple sets of specifications, required for adequate performance. Given the numerous variables encountered by the designers during the design process including---but not limited to---the variations in the fabrication process, temperature, transmission media, it becomes very challenging to implement systems that can meet very tight specifications, and yet keep high levels of integration and preserve cost effectiveness. Adaptive circuits and systems are a commonly used technique to combat the variations encountered during the design process. Essentially, an adaptive circuit is a circuit that has the ability to detect any drift in its own characteristics (drift due to temperature or a fabrication process parameter change for example) as well as any change in the characteristics of other circuits that interface with it (a transmission media for instance), and then tune itself back to its desired state accordingly.; In this thesis, a categorization of the variables encountered during the design of electronic systems will be presented. A description of the idea of adaptive systems will be presented along with a discussion of the different circuit elements required for any adaptive system to operate successfully. Two different adaptive techniques are going to be proposed in this research. The first technique is a digital adaptive algorithm for tuning on-chip resistors that are subject to wide errors due to the fabrication process and temperature variations. The proposed algorithm improves the accuracy of on-chip resistors to be within +/-5% instead of the typical +/-25% guaranteed by the process, and can potentially achieve more accuracy if more chip area is used. The second technique is an analog adaptive equalizer used to compensate for Intersymbol Interference caused by the limited bandwidth of the transmission media. The Equalizer uses a new voltage-controlled transconductor proposed by the author to achieve wider, highly linear adaptive range, and is used to enable high speed data transmission across a UTP CAT-5 Ethernet cable up to 100 meters in length.