RF2: Reviewing Circuit Designs

When reviewing circuit designs, many approaches can be followed without any approach being obviously superior in all cases. In this course, we will use a relaxed approach to structured reviewing by following these steps:

1. General presentation of the circuit design by the designer:
   1. Target specifications & explanation where needed
   2. Benchmarking against state of the art: what performance has been achieved in literature and how does that compare to the target specifications?
   3. Analysis of the target specification: what are the most critical (=important & difficult) parameters in the specification?
   4. Selection of topology & explanation of method used for this selection
   5. DC Biasing of the circuit
   6. Dimensioning of the cicuit components
   7. Floorplan and modeling of main parasitics of the circuit
   8. AC analysis of the circuit (noise, gain, phase, stability)
   9. Transient/Harmonic Balance analysis of the circuit (distortion, blocking, SFDR)
   10. Circuit simulations to verify DC/AC/Transien analysis
   11. Layout design
   12. Verification (DRC/LVS)
   13. Simulation of extracted layout
2. General questions by the reviewers:
   1. Items that were not clear from the presentation
   2. Items that were not included in the presentation
   3. Items of the design method and/or analysis that were questionable
3. Specific questions by the reviewers:
   1. Are the specifications complete, clear & realistic?
   2. Checking for typical/usual learning opportunities using a structured checklist
      1. For each of the subcircuits, if present
      2. For the circuit in its application (PCB, external components etc.)
      3. For the packaged circuit
      4. For the complete circuit
   3. Checking for industrialization:
      1. Design for fabrication yield (robustness against process variations)
      2. Design for application robustness (temperature and supply voltage variations, ESD, overvoltage protection, load mismatch, unconditional stability etc.)
      3. Design for reliability (lifetime effects such as electromigration)
      4. Design for test (can the circuit be easily debugged, evaluated, and characterized in the lab, and can it be easily and cheaply/quickly tested in production
4. Any potential issues with the design:
   1. Will the design self-destruct?
      1. Breakdown
      2. ESD
      3. Temperature
      4. E-Migration
      5. Latch-up
   2. Will the designed circuit be functional?
      1. Does the signal path exist?
      2. Is the biasing correct?
      3. Will the circuit be stable?
   3. Will the designed circuit meet specifcations?
      1. Is it unconditionally stable?
      2. Does it achieve sufficient immunity against supply variations?
      3. Will it meet all specifications (gain, noise figure, linearity, bandwidth etc.) also across process variations as well as voltage and temperature changes?
5. List of issues to be addressed and questions to be answered by the designers before the next design review (if any)
6. Sign-off if all issuess and questions have been adequately addressed