Getting to know simulation - Part1 – Introduction

In circuit design - simulation tools will ease your life a lot - if you know what you are doing. As such I am writing a series of posts that I hope will best help you to understand what you can do with simulation - by using a buffer amplifier design example. The goal is to introduce basic features such as

1. DCOP
2. TRAN
3. AC
4. Multi-Step
5. Monte-Carlo

Let’s take an example as below:

1.      Supposed that we need to design something that interface a sensor to ADC, so we have

a.      sensor

b.      The ADC

c.       And something in between – a voltage buffer – and this is what we need to design

2.      To supplement the design example, let’s put some more details

a.      Sensor bandwidth is at least 10kHz

b.      Sensor can swing from 0V to 1V

c.       ADC full range voltage is 0V to 2V.

Since I am a user of Mindi from Microchip, I will use Mindi as examples, but essentially all simulation tools have the basic set of features. If you want, you can install Mindi mentioned from my earlier blog (In this case, you can quickly test out the example):  http://electroniccircuitdesignsharing.blogspot.com/2012/03/tools-for-circuit-design.html.

Alternately, you can down load SIMetrix from http://www.simetrix.co.uk/site/demo.html, which is essentially the same thing as Mindi (just the name different as far as I am concerned, same GUI, same file type....)

My advice is to play around with your simulation tools, knowing the capability of what it can do will make your life a lot more fun :). So wait for Part 2 to get started.