A Circuit Grammar For Operational Amplifier Design

Item

Title
en_US A Circuit Grammar For Operational Amplifier Design
Creator
en_US Ressler, Andrew Lewis
Date
2004-10-20T20:10:08Z
Date Available
2004-10-20T20:10:08Z
Date Issued
en_US 1984-01-01
Identifier
en_US AITR-807
Abstract
en_US Electrical circuit designers seldom create really new topologies or use old ones in a novel way. Most designs are known combinations of common configurations tailored for the particular problem at hand. In this thesis I show that much of the behavior of a designer engaged in such ordinary design can be modelled by a clearly defined computational mechanism executing a set of stylized rules. Each of my rules embodies a particular piece of the designer's knowledge. A circuit is represented as a hierarchy of abstract objects, each of which is composed of other objects. The leaves of this tree represent the physical devices from which physical circuits are fabricated. By analogy with context-free languages, a class of circuits is generated by a phrase-structure grammar of which each rule describes how one type of abstract object can be expanded into a combination of more concrete parts. Circuits are designed by first postulating an abstract object which meets the particular design requirements. This object is then expanded into a concrete circuit by successive refinement using rules of my grammar. There are in general many rules which can be used to expand a given abstract component. Analysis must be done at each level of the expansion to constrain the search to a reasonable set. Thus the rule of my circuit grammar provide constraints which allow the approximate qualitative analysis of partially instantiated circuits. Later, more careful analysis in terms of more concrete components may lead to the rejection of a line of expansion which at first looked promising. I provide special failure rules to direct the repair in this case.
Extent
10526070 bytes
3841010 bytes
Format
application/postscript
application/pdf
Language
en_US
Relation
en_US AITR-807