DIGITAL ELECTRONICS

Academic year and teacher
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Versione italiana
Academic year
2014/2015
Teacher
PIERO OLIVO
Credits
9
Didactic period
Secondo Semestre
SSD
ING-INF/01

Training objectives

This is the first course of Digital Electronics and it studies the basic elements of a digital system from the electrical point of view, by considering the information as current or voltage.The main goal of the course consists in providing the basis to tackle the study of complex digital systems and of their interconnections under the constrains imposed by cost, speed, area occupancy, disturbs' immunity.

Prerequisites

The concepts and the knowledge provides by the courses of "Analisi e sintesi dei circuiti digitali (Analysis and synthesis of digital circuits)" and "Teoria dei Circuiti (Circuits Theory)" are mandatory

Course programme

Digital and analog electronics - Digital systems -
Differences between analog and digital electronics - Operating levels: systems, boards, integrated circuits and different abstraction levels; basic elements; Digital design evolution: custom, semicustom, FPGA; Signal integrity. Elements of semiconductor physics and technology.

Basic digital circuits' properties
Figure of merits (cost, performance, reliability,....). I/O characteristics. Dynamic characteristics. Power consumption.
Logic Families

TTL Family. Data sheets

CMOS Circuits
Elements of MOS transistor operations. CMOS inverter. Relay-like behavior. Static characteristic, Logic threshold, geometric dimensions, power consumption. Gate CMOS and FCMOS

Switching and signal transmission
Switching - Different problems in boards and chips. Capacitive load. Transients in CMOS circuits. Distributed RC networks. Transmission lines. Terminations. Fan-out lines and bus.

Noise in digital systems
Simultaneous switching. Power and ground bouncing. Ohmic drops on power lines. Crosstalk.
Emerging problems caused by dimension reduction and frequency increase.

Waveform generators
Monostable CMOS – Astable CMOS – Schmitt trigger

ADC and DAC
Conversion theory; general properties of signal converters; DAC - ADC (double ramps, counters, successive approximations, flash). Antialiasing filters; Sample & hold circuits

Memories
Memories' characteristics; Memories organization; Decoder; RAM; SRAM cells; SRAM read/write; DRAM cells; DRAM rear/write; mostly read memories and non-volatile memories; ROM, EPROM, OTP, EEPROM, FLASH NOR e FLASH NAND

Circuit Simulation
Introduction to Spice – Practical lessons

Didactic methods

Theoretical/practical lessons.

Learning assessment procedures

The examination is divided in 3 sections.
One test (multiple choice questions or solutions of numeric exercises) based on all the topics tackled in the class or on the basic concepts of the following courses: “Analysis and synthesis of digital circuits” and “Circuits Theory”, with the aim of evaluating how deeply the student has studied the subject and how he is able to understand the basic topics analyzed. This section is selective (the student that does not show a sufficient knowledge of the subject, cannot be admitted to the following sections.)
One simulation of a simple digital circuit by using the SPICE platform, with the aim of understanding if the student has the ability of understanding the metric and the performance of a digital circuit
One oral section, where the ability of linking different subjects related to the digital electronics is evaluated, rather than the ability of “repeating” specific topics tackled in the course.

Reference texts

Lecture handouts

Specific topics can be further developed in the following texts:
1. J.M. Rabaey, A. Chandrakasan, B. Nikolic; Digital Integrated Circuits; Prentice Hall, 2nd edition, 2003 (reference book for "Electronics of digital systems" teaching)
2. W. J. Dally, J. W. Poulton; Digital System Engineering; Cambridge University Press, 1998
3. H.B. Bakoglu; Circuits, Interconnections, and Packaging for VLSI; Addison- Wesley, 1990