Layout Synthesis of Analog Integrated Circuits

Analog integrated circuits are significant for the booming mixed-signal integrated systems as the interface to the external, continuous-valued world. Because the layout of analog circuits is intrinsically more difficult than the digital counterpart, a large portion of the effort involved in analog circuit design has to be spent in the layout phase. In contrast to the layout synthesis of digital circuits automated by weIl developed tools, most of analog layouts are still handcrafted by designers. To address this problem, an automatic layout tool called ALADIN has been developed. Different from some developed systems which more or less bypass circuit designers, it provides the possibility to incorporate the specific knowledge and experience of analog circuit designers into the synthesis process in order to create high quality layouts. This thesis focuses on the analog module placement and routing problems. Some related techniques on the analog layout synthesis are also discussed.