True Front-to-Back Analogue IC Designers' Training

Abstract

Analogue and mixed-signal sensor electronics comprise a small yet essential fraction of a large variety of embedded and integrated systems in industrial application systems. While the number of devices is considerably smaller than in massively parallel digital systems, the design of each device requires much more care, time and experience; moreover, learning the skills required for analogue and mixed-signal sensor electronics can be tedious, and these challenges are not taken up by a sufficient number of students to meet industry demands, in particular of the booming sensor and microelectromechanical systems industries. To attract more students to this topic, we offer design courses that combine theoretical and practical skills based on state-of-the-art tools and technologies. Students undertake (individually or in small groups) analogue/mixed signal design projects, but, due to the time constraints common in engineering courses, they are often unable to test to their designs. Drawing from research work and results on dynamically reconfigurable sensor electronics, we have tackled this problem by giving students an opportunity to download their dimensioning solution into certain reconfigurable devices and to carry out testing and measurement to characterise their designs. To this end, we introduced the true front-to-back (TFB) analogue IC designers training kit, used in the CAD laboratory at the Institute of Integrated Sensor Systems (ISE) in TU-Kaiserslautern for various engineering curricula. This paper gives the details of the teaching concepts and state of implementation, the reconfigurable hardware platform and typical results for student design and measurement activities. Finally, we give an outlook on upcoming reconfigurable chips.