ID:
509685
Duration (hours):
64
CFU:
6
SSD:
ELETTRONICA
Year:
2025
Overview
Date/time interval
Primo Semestre (29/09/2025 - 16/01/2026)
Syllabus
Course Objectives
The main objective of the course is to provide an introduction to the design of a wide area of analog / digital interface circuits and systems: sensors, transducers, wireless and wireline front-ends, electro-optical interfaces, etc. ..
At the end of the course, students will be able to provide the main guidelines for the selection and design of interface architectures for high-speed serial communications. They will also be able to identify the main types of A/D and D/A converters used in these systems. They will also have acquired the necessary tools to study new architectures and to develop them using the most modern tools and the most advanced CAD techniques.
Course Prerequisites
The course assumes good knowledge of the basic electronic circuits (bachelor electrical-engineering courses) and the ability to implement simple algorithms in Matlab. Basic knowledge of digital signal processing techniques is highly recommended (statistical signal processing course).
Teaching Methods
Lectures (hours/year in lecture theatre): 34 Practical class (hours/year in lecture theatre): 4 Practicals / Workshops (hours/year in Lab): 26 Lectures are carried out using overhead projector. The slides are made available to the students prior to the lecture. Practical activities are carried out with CAD software in room D4.
Assessment Methods
The final evaluation consists of a written test followed by oral discussion. The test consists of one circuit analysis exercise which provides an evaluation of the design skills and 10 multiple-choice questions that covers all the major subject areas of the course. The final score is based 50% on the exercise and 50% on the questions. There is no threshold to be admitted to the oral exam.
Texts
During the course the instructor will provide students with the lectures slides. For further reference: B. Razavi, Principles of Data Conversion System Design, IEEE Press. M. Pelgrom, Analog-to-Digital Conversion, Springer. Serial interfaces: G. Cowan, "Mixed-Signal CMOS for Wireline Communication", Cambridge University Press Electro-optical interfaces: B. Razavi, Design of Integrated Circuits for Optical Communications, 2nd Edition, Wiley Digital signal processing: Simon Haykin: Adaptive Filter Theory, Pearson.
Contents
The course is structured in two parts: the first part provides an introduction to the design of the main architectures of D / A and A / D converters, the second part focuses on serial interfaces.
Lectures are complemented by the laboratories, which address the analysis and design issues, at the architectural and circuit-level, with the help of CAD tools (Cadence and Matlab).
A/D and D/A converters
This part of the course deals with the design of A/D and D/A converters. The emphasis is on the analysis and design of the different converter architectures and on the related performance limitations/trade-offs.
• ADC Introduction: performance metrics
• Basic building blocks: amplifiers, comparators, S / H circuits
• Flash and two-step flash architectures
• Pipeline structures
• Folding and interpolating structures
• Successive approximation converters (SAR)
• Interleaved converters
• Sigma-delta converters
• DAC Introduction: performance metrics
• D/A converters design: operating principles (scale of resistors, current division and charge division), circuit examples, yield estimation
Serial interfaces.
This part of the course provides an overview of the various building blocks encountered in high-speed serial interfaces, as well as the key system aspects involved in their design.
Serializers and de-serializers applications
Basics of serial communications theory
Non idealities in serial communications
Clock and data recovery
Receivers analog front-ends: continuous-time equalizers
Receivers analog front-ends: decision-feedback equalization (DFE)
Transmitters: finite-impulse-response equalizers (FIR)
Optical communications: trans-impedance amplifiers and Drivers
DSP in serdes: system aspects, least-mean-square optimizations and calibrations
System modeling in Matlab
Course Language
English
More information
For more information please refer to the KIRO platform:
https://elearning.unipv.it/course/view.php?id=5800
Degrees
Degrees
Electronic Engineering
Master’s Degree
2 years
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