MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Fall 2001 Catalogue Supplement

6.973 Analog VLSI and Biological Systems (H)

L WF 11-12:30, 38-166, R M 11-12, 34-301
Professor Rahul Sarpeshkar, Room 38-294, 8-6599
Prereq.: 6.031, knowledge of feedback from 6.032 or 6.003 helpful
4-0-8

Qualifies as a subject in the Device, Circuits and Systems Engineering Concentration

Ultra low power analog VLSI design. Low noise analog circuit design. Feedback circuit design. Device physics of the MOS transistor including subthreshold characteristics and noise characteristics. Building-block circuits for sensory system design including transconductance amplifiers, C-G filters, adaptive photoreceptors, and pulsatile oscillator circuits. Biophysics of the inner ear or cochlea and the design of an analog low-power silicon cochlea. Design of low power bionic systems for the deaf and blind. Comparison of the pros and cons of analog versus digital computation. Hybrid analog-digital circuits. Hybrid state machines as an extension of finite state machines to the hybrid domain. Applications of hybrid state machines to arithmetic, filtering, pattern recognition, and control. Final class project will involve circuit design, VLSI layout, SPICE simulation, and verification of a moderate size analog circuit or system.