Symbolic analysis techniques for design centering of analog circuits

A new approach for determining design center of analog circuits is presented. It is based on the use of symbolic analysis techniques, which permit to perform only one simulation of the circuit in order to determine a set of parameter values maximizing the manufacturing yield for an assumed statistical distribution. This is an important improvement with respect to preexisting techniques of design centering, which major limiting factor is constituted by the considerable computational effort required for simulating many times the circuit under consideration. A program implementing the new design centering approach has been realized and its application to circuit examples is reported in order to show the effectiveness of the developed procedure.