An algorithm for power estimation in switched-capacitor circuits

A number of low-power designs, such as those for mobile communication equipment, contain switched-capacitor circuits. In such designs it is important to be able to estimate the power dissipated by the switched-capacitor portion of the circuit. This paper describes an algorithm for the computation of statistical information about the power dissipated in a switched-capacitor circuit when corresponding statistical information about the inputs to the circuit is known. Ordinary circuit simulators are not suited for this task. Because they can only compute the power dissipated by the circuit for one specific set of input signals. The algorithm does not require Monte-Carlo analyses, and it accounts for correlation among the inputs. To demonstrate the algorithm's performance, numerical results obtained on a number of sample switched-capacitor circuits are reported.