1 Basic Concepts

1.1 Capacitor
• current through capacitor
dvc
ic = C (1)
dt
Or, the same equation using the total charge stored on the capacitor:

Qc = Cvc (2)

• impedance of capacitor
1
ZC = (3)
sC

1.2 Transistor Knowledge

• Threshold Voltage
pMOS: VT H < 0 ; nMOS: VT H > 0

• Conducting condition
pMOS: VGS − ∥VT H ∥ = VOV ≤ 0
nMOS: VGS − ∥VT H ∥ = VOV ≥ 0
non-conducting: transistor is off, can be removed from ciucuit.

• Saturation condition:
pMOS: VDS < VOV
nMOS: VDS > VOV
triode region: transistor can be viewed as resistor with resistance ro

• Current
W
I∝ (4)
L
• Parasitic Capacitance
C ∝W ∗L (5)

1.3 Current Mirror

Wtest
Itest Ltest
= Wref
(6)
Iref
Lref

2
 W46
I46 L46
= W49
(7)
I49 L49

1.4 Inverter speed

• The speed (rate-of-change) of the output voltage of the inverter is proportional to
the load capacitance.
• If the width of the NMOS is increased, then the inverter will fall faster. If the width
of the PMOS is increased, then the inverter will rise faster.
• The inverter also has an input capacitance. This capacitance is proportional to the
width*length of both nmos and cmos. . In order to generally achieve the highest
speed in a chain of identically sized inverters, we will need a small input capacitance,
and a large transistor current. Therefore, we will need a unknown width and a small
length .
• When a load capacitance is added at the output of the inverter, the peaking will
be smaller .
• When charging or discharging a capacitor through an inverter, the waveform will
be exponential .

1.5 Ring Oscillator

• The frequency is determined by the propagation delay of all inverters.
• The frequency is significantly determined by the lengths of the transistors.
• Adding an extra capacitance will increase the oscillation period.

1.6 Differential pair

• When the width of both transistors are increased, the transconductance gain will
increase . This is because the gain is proportional to the width over length of the
transistor, so if the length is increased instead, then the transconductance gain will
increase.

3
2 Quiz 1

2.1 Question 2
• This analysis does not take any time-related effects into account. The solution is
a state that is invariant in time. One way of looking at it is that all components
have had an very long time to settle, and that the voltages and currents don’t move
in time anymore. This type of analysis takes all nonlinear effects into considera-
tion! However, this makes this type of simulation slightly slower than small-signal
analysis.

• DC analysis (.DC [source] [start] [stop] [step])

2.2 Question 3
• This type of analysis is also called a small-signal analysis. It computes the oper-
ating point of the circuit first, and then considers small perturbations on top of
that operating point that vary with frequency. The analysis then approximates
all nonlinear devices by linear ones (using a small-signal equivalent model). This
approximation is fine for very small perturbations. For example, an amplifier can
be biased around 1V ± 1mV, and amplifies it to 5V ± 10mV. The small-signal
analysis allows you to find the signal gain of 10 (it amplifies 1mV to 10mV). This
type of simulation is really fast due to the linearization!

• AC analysis (.AC [lin—dec—oct] [steps] [start] [stop])

2.3 Question 4
• By far the slowest type of simulation takes all effects into consideration: time-
domain effects as well as all nonlinear effects. This simulation is probably closest
to show you what happens in real time. It is better not to trust the simulation
too much however, as you still have rounding errors, errors due to using discrete
time steps (truncation errors), and of course model errors, no noise contributions,
no process variation, no temperature effects over time, etc.

• Transient analysis (.TRAN [step] [stop])