SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS OF

ANALOG CIRCUITS:
TECHNIQUES AND APPLlCATIONS
edited by

Lawrence P. Huelsman
University of Arizona, Tuscon
and
Georges G.E. Gielen
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium

A Special Issue of
ANALOG INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SIGNAL PROCESSING

Reprinted from ANALOG INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SIGNAL PROCESSING

Val. 3, No. 1 (1993)

SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC

 THE KLUWER INTERNATIONAL SERIES
IN ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE

ANALOG CIRCUITS AND SIGNAL PROCESSING

Consulting Editor

Mohammed Ismail
Ohio State University

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 Contents

Special Issue on Symbolic Analysis of Analog Circuits:

Techniques and Applications
Guest Editors: Lawrence P. Huelsman and Georges G.. Gielen

Editorial Mohammed Ismail. David G. Haigh and Nobuo Fuji 5

Guest Editors Introduction Lawrence P. Huelsman and Georges G. E. Gielen 7

Symbolic Analysis of Simplified Transfer Functions .

Marco Amadori, Roberto Guerrieri and Enrico Malavasi 9

Symbolic Analysis of Large-Scale Networks Using a Hierarchical Signal Flowgraph Approach .....
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. Marwan M. Hassoun and Kevin S. McCarville 31

Formula Approximation for Flat and Hierarchical Symbolic Analysis .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. FV Fernandez. A. ROdriguez-Vazquez, J.D. Martin and J.L. Huertas 43

Symbolic Simulators for the Fault Diagnosis of Nonlinear Analog Circuits .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. S. Manetti and M.e. Piccirilli 59

More Efficient Algorithms for Symbolic Network Analysis: Supernodes and Reduced Loop Analysis
Ralf Sommer, Dirk Ammermann and Eckhard He mig 73
Llbrary of Congrcss Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Symbolic analysis of analog circuits : techniques and applications I

edited by Lawrence P. Huelsman, Georges G. E. Gielen.
p. cm. -- (The Kluwer international series in engineering and
computer science : SECS 219. Analog circuits and signal processing)
Issued also as a special issue of Analog integrated circuils and
signal processing, volume 3, no. 1, January 1993.
ISBN 978-1-4613-6424-5 ISBN 978-1-4615-3240-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-3240-8
1. Electric circuits, Linear. 2. Symbolic circuit analysis.
3. Electronic circuit design-oData processing. 1. Huelsman,
Lawrence P. II. Gielen, Georges. III. Series: Kluwer international
series in engineering and computer science ; SECS 219. IV. Series:
Kluwer international ser ies in engineering and computer science.
Analog circuits and signal processing.
TK454 . 15 . LS6S96 1993
621 . 3815--dc20 92-40211
CIP

Copyright 1993 by Springer Science+Business Media New York

Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1993
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1993
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photo-copying, record ing,
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Springer Science+
Business Media, LLC.

Printed on acid-free paper.

 Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing 3, 5 (1993)
1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston. Manufactured in The Netherlands.

Editorial

We are pleased to announce that starting with this issue of Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing (Volume
3, 1993), the Journal will appear six times a years instead of four. This increase in issues per year is intended
to keep up with the increased number of high quality papers being submitted for publication.
We are also very pleased to welcome as members of the Editorial Board, Drs. John Choma, Jr., Johan Huijsing,
Edgar Sanchez-Sinencio, Trond Srether and Gabor Ternes, and we look forward to the valuable contributions they
will make to our Journal.

Mohammed Ismail
David G. Haigh
Nobuo Fujii
Editors-in-Chief
 Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing 3, 7 (1993)
1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston. Manufactured in The Netherlands.

Guest Editorial

This Special Issue is dedicated to the techniques and applications of symbolic analysis for analog circuits. The
general topic of analog circuit analysis may be divided into two main categories. The first of these is usually called
numeric analysis. In this, numeric values of ohms, henries, farads, gain, and so forth, are assigned to the appropri-
ate circuit elements. The interconnection of the elements in the circuit is specified by topological information,
typically given as node numbers. The goal of the analysis is the generation of numeric information giving sinusoidal
steady-state or time-domain response information, which is presented either in tabular form or, more usually, as
plotted information. Examples of numeric analysis are readily seen as the output from the SPICE program or
its PC counterpart PSpice. The second general category of analog circuit analysis is the one addressed in this Special
Issue, namely symbolic analysis. In this, literal names (symbolic values) are assigned to the elements of the circuit.
These literal names represent the symbolic (nonnumeric) values of the ohms, henries, farads, gain, and so forth
of the circuit elements. These names, together with the topological interconnection information, are used to create
a network function in the complex variable s or z which gives a description of the relation between the transformed
output and input variables of the circuit. In such a network function, the coefficients of various powers of s or
z appear as explicit functions of the literal names of the circuit elements.
Symbolic analysis and the computer techniques for automated symbolic analysis, i.e., the automatic generation
of analytic equations describing a circuit's electrical behavior, have reattracted much attention in recent years.
They represent a natural way of analyzing a circuit, a way taught in all basic engineering courses and practiced
by real-life designers. Symbolic analysis is far more general than numeric analysis, since if offers complete freedom
in the choice of applications, and includes sinusoidal steady-state and time-domain studies as special cases. Numeric
simulators such as SPICE have become much more popular than symbolic ones as design supporting CAD tools,
because they can rapidly and accurately simulate a circuit's behavior, including its transient response. They are
also able to simulate larger-size circuits. In contrast, however, symbolic analyses can provide many results which
are simply not available from numeric simulation methods. Most importantly, they can provide explicit insight
into the dominant behavior and properties of a circuit. Among the useful applications of this insight are the deter-
mination of derivatives of the network function with respect to one or more elements. Such literal information
provides direct application to sensitivity determination. Another application of the insight obtained from symbolic
analysis is the development of the equations which are required in the use of optimization techniques to provide
solutions to specific design specifications. With SPICE-like numerical simulators, the same insight can only be
obtained after combining and often extrapolating the results of numerous simulation runs. In addition, symbolic
analysis can also be used in many other applications, such as in compiled-code evaluation for statistical analysis,
and automated synthesis or failure diagnosis of analog circuits, much the same way as symbolic Boolean analysis
is used for synthesis and verification of logic circuits.
For a long time, symbolic circuit analysis has been regarded as an academic topic. It is true that it has computa-
tional complexity limits which have prevented it from being feasible for large-size circuits. In recent years however,
enormous progress has been made in developing more advanced techniques and algorithms for symbolic circuit
analysis. This has resulted in an extension of the functionality of symbolic simulators, including for instance the
automatic generation of simplified symbolic expressions or the automatic generation of symbolic distortion for-
mulas. At the same time, the capabilities of symbolic analysis have been extended toward larger circuits by the
introduction of hierarchical methods. All these advancements have resulted in the recent development of several
successful symbolic simulators such as ISAAC, ASAP, SC, and SSPICE. As a result, symbolic analysis is finally
becoming an attractive tool to assist designers in real-life circuit design.
This Special Issue contains five selected papers that present recent developments in the field of symbolic analysis
for analog circuits. The first paper, by Amadori et aI., presents original algorithms for the direct generation 0;'
simplified symbolic transfer functions based on the relative magnitudes of the circuit elements. These simplified
expressions, which show the dominant contributions only, provide a good approximation for the overall circuit
behavior. Also, an algorithm for the simplified symbolic computation of the poles and zeroes of the transfer func-
tions is described. Hassoun and McCarville, in the second paper, describe an approach to the symbolic analysis
8 Huelsman and Gielen

of large-scale networks based on hierarchical decomposition. The total network is recursively decomposed into
smaller subblocks, which are analyzed separately. The expression for the total network is then obained by combin-
ing bottom-up the expressions for the subblocks. This tremendously reduces the CPU time and the number of
symbolic terms for large circuits. In the third paper, Fernandez et al. describe new criteria and algorithms for
the generation of simplified expressions, both for flat and hierarchical symbolic analysis. A major difference between
this approach and that given by the first paper, is that the simplification is carried out taking into account a range
of element values instead of a single nominal value for the magnitude of each circuit element. The technique of
simplification is also extended to the hierarchical formulas, which would be the result of the decomposition method
of the second paper. This combination opens new perspectives for the fast generation of both exact and simplified
symbolic expressions for large circuits. In the fourth paper, Manetti and Piccirilli show how dedicated simulators
based on compiled symbolic formulas can boost the efficiency of applications requiring repetitive circuit evaluation.
Nonlinear circuits are handled with piecewise linear approximation. The application of the method to nonlinear
circuit fault diagnosis is presented, in which the actual element values and hence also faulty components are extracted
by fitting the simulated to the measured response. Finally, in the short paper by Sommer et al., two alternative
network equation formulations are highlighted: supernode and reduced loop analysis. Compared to the classical
node, loop, and MNA formulations, the described variants result in simpler equations. This is advantageous both
for manual analysis as well as for computerized symbolic analysis.
The editors would like to thank all the authors who submitted papers, all the reviewers who participated in
the final selection of the papers, and the Kluwer Editorial Staff for their efforts in creating this Special Issue.
We hope that this Issue will provide you, the reader, with a useful introduction to the potential and power of the
use of symbolic analysis techniques in analog design.

Lawrence P. Huelsman
Georges G.E. Gielen

Lawrence P. Huelsman received the BSEE degree from Case Institute of Technology and the MSEE and Ph.D.
degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers. He currently holds an appointment as Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at
the University of Arizona.
Dr. Huelsman is the author or coauthor of sixteen books including: Basic Circuit Theory-3rd Ed. published
by Prentice-Hall, Inc.; and Operational Amplifiers: Design and Applications. Introduction to Operational Amplifier
Theory and Applications, and Introduction to the Theory and Design of Active Filters, published by the McGraw-
Hill Book Company. Japanese, German, Spanish and Russian translations have been made of several of his books.
He has also published many papers in the area of active circuit theory.
He has served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuit and System Theory and the IEEE Trans-
actions on Education and was technical chairman of the IEEE Region Six Annual Conference. He is a member
of the steering committee for the Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems. He is a member of several scien-
tific, engineering, and honorary societies, including Tau Beta Pi, Phi Beta Kappa, Eta Kappa Nu, and Sigma Xi. He has received the Anderson
Prize of the College of Engineering and Mines of the University of Arizona for his contributions to education.

Georges G.E. Gielen was born in Heist-op-den-Berg, Belgium, on August 25, 1963. He received the E.E. and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Heverlee, Belgium, in 1986 and
1990, respectively. From 1986 until 1990, he was appointed by the Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research
as a Research Assistant at the ESAT laboratory of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, working on symbolic analysis
and analog design automation. From 1990 until 1991, he was connected to the University of California, Berkeley,
as a Visiting Lecturer and Visiting Research Engineer, working on behavioral models for analog integrated circuits.
In October 1991, he was again appointed by the Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research as a Senior Research
Assistant at the ESAT-MICAS laboratory of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Heverlee, Belgium, where he is
currently heading the analog design automation group. His research interests are in the design of analog and mixed
analog-digital integrated circuits and in analog design automation (modeling and simulation, synthesis, optimiza-
tion, layout and testing). He has authored or co-authored more than 30 papers, including several chapters for edited
books. In 1991, he also published a book on symbolic analysis and design automation of analog integrated circuits.