Synthesis of analog circuits using evolutionary hardware

Abstract

The use of the genetic algorithm as a tool for the automatic synthesis of analog circuits is investigated. The advantages and modifications that can be introduced in the standard genetic algorithm, to improve its performance in this specific application, are discussed. The synthesis of an ideal active low pass filter is used as a test example to emphasize the characteristics and limitations of the genetic algorithm. To improve the simulation time a high level synthesis approach, based on behavioral modeling of the active circuit components, is proposed. The circuit coding is based on the use of adjacency matrices in order to reduce the number of "non-simulable" circuits.