Synthesis of LC-Oscillators Using Rival Multi-Objective Multi-Constraint Optimization Kernels

Abstract

This chapter presents a state-of-the-art multi-objective/multi-constraint design automation approach applied to the design of an LC-Voltage Controlled Oscillator and an LC-Oscillator for a 130 nm technology node and leading to sets of design solutions showing figures-of-merit around -192 dBc/Hz and -186 dBc/Hz, respectively. The proposed approach, implemented in AIDA-C, guarantees accuracy by using commercial circuit simulators (HSPICE® and ELDO®) to evaluate the performance of the tentative circuit solutions, where the number of time-consuming circuit simulations is efficiently pruned by the optimization kernel. Three multi-objective optimization algorithms, the NSGA-II, the MOPSO, and the MOSA, are experimented with in the synthesis of the quoted oscillators and compared in terms of performance using statistical results obtained from multiple synthesis runs for each one of the oscillators. The performance of the optimized oscillators is then compared to other state-of-the-art results, showing the benefits of the presented multi-objective design approach.