Circuit Design for Green Communications – Methods, Tools and Examples

The paper makes an overview of the existing methods applied for circuit design with low power consumption objective. It considers Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools and modules for power consumption estimation at the design stage. For analog and mixed analog-digital circuit design, the power estimation options in ORCAD Design Suit with PSpice and Analog Filter Wizard are studied. For digital communication systems the study covers the power estimation, analysis and optimization in ISE and Vivado systems, Xilinx Power Estimator (XPE) tool and spreadsheet, the XPower Analyzer, as well as similar tools proposed by ALTERA PowerPlay Early Power Estimator and QUARTUS II Power Play Power Analyzer. Two examples are developed: Power consumption estimation of a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP)based communication system design, based on datasheets and software energy monitoring tools, and power consumption estimation of a Kasami pseudo-random sequence generator circuit design on FPGA using Vivado.