Floating Gate Based Large Scale Field Programmable Analog Arrays For Analog Signal Processing

Large-scale reconfigurable and programmable analog devices provide a new option for prototyping and synthesizing analog circuits for analog signal processing and beyond. Field-programmable analog arrays (FPAAs) built upon floating gate transistor technologies provide the analog reconfigurability and programmability density required for large-scale devices on a single integrated circuit (IC). A wide variety of synthesized circuits, such as OTA followers, band-pass filters, and capacitively coupled summation/difference circuits, were measured to demonstrate the flexibility of FPAAs. Three generations of devices were designed and tested to verify the viability of such floating gate based large-scale FPAAs. Various architectures and circuit topologies were also designed and tested to explore the trade-offs present in reconfigurable analog systems. In addition, large-scale FPAAs have been incorporated into class laboratory exercises, which provide students with a much broader range of circuit and IC design experiences than have been previously possible. By combining reconfigurable analog technologies with an equivalent large-scale digital device, such as a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), an extremely powerful and flexible mixed signal development system can be produced that will enable all of the benefits possible through cooperative analog/digital signal processing (CADSP).