Analog IC Designer

Analog IC Design Engineer


What does an Analog IC Designer is expected to know?

Most of the major companies will expect you to know the basics of analog circuits. If  we take an example of fresher or 1or 2 year experience , since he might not have industry experience, so companies expect him to know the basics thoroughly. So if you are a fresher, doesn’t have any IC design experience(just coming out of University), it is better to join as an intern to get some experience. Analog IC Designer is expected to know the following topics thoroughly:

Ø  RC/RL Circuits: RC/RL circuits, step response, impulse response, ramp response, response for pulse signal, steady state response, poles and zeroes, magnitude transfer function, phase transfer function, series and parallel combination of RC circuits and their step response.

Ø  RLC circuits: LC oscillation, series and parallel resonance, step response, impulse response,  Quality factor, Bandwidth, Impedance, Admittance.

Ø  MOS: current and voltage transfer characteristics, manufacturing process, moscap, dc characteristics, gm, gds, gmb, fc cutoff frequency, common source/drain/gate amplifiers, cascode amplifier, gain, bandwidth, poles and zeroes in amplifiers, source degeneration, noise, small signal analysis.

Ø  Amplifiers: Common Source/Drain/Gate amplifiers, Cascode Amplifier, Source Degeneration, Differential Amplifier, Gain, Bandwidth, Linearity, Power, Noise, Feedback, Voltage swing, Slew Rate, Bode Plot.

Ø  Opamp: Differential Amplifier, Common/Differential mode configuration, transfer characteristics of Differential amplifier, fully differential, cascode, folded cascode, two stage amplifier, cascading amplifiers, gain, bandwidth, phase, open loop gain, closed loop gain, phase margin, compensation(miller and other schemes), dc response, ac response, transient response, slewrate, noise response, offset.

Ø  Bias: Supply independent biasing, Voltage Reference, Current Reference, Bandgap, temperature compensation, Parasitic BJT transistor, Layout

Ø  Advanced Circuits: Oscillators, Phase Locked Loops, Analog to Digital Converters, ADC/DAC, Charge pumps, Low Drop Out regulators, Buck converters, Boost converters, PWM circuits, Switched capacitor circuits, Filters, Frequency dividers, Input/Output circuits, Level converters.

Ø  Layout: Layout techniques for analog circuits, matching etc.

Ø  Misc: control system basics, communication systems, signals and systems, modulation techniques, sampling and over/under sampling, Lab equipment such as CRO, spectrum analyser, modulation analyzer etc

Some Good Books:
If you want to make your career in Analog IC Design, you should definitely read Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits, Behzad Razavi. This book is must for all analog designers. There are few other books like Grey and Meyer, Ken Martin, Allen Holberg which are interesting

·         Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits, Behzad Razavi

·         Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits, Paul R. grey, Paul J. Hurst,  Stephen H. Lewis, Robert G. Meyer

·          CMOS Circuit design, layout and simulation, R Jacob Baker, Harry W. Li and David E. Boyce

·         Analog Integrated Circuit Design, David Johns, Ken Martin

·         CMOS Analog Circuit Design, Phillip E. Allen and Douglas R. Holberg

·         The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits, Thomas Lee

·         RF Microelectronics, Razavi