Abstract
The design (synthesis) of analog electrical circuits
starts with a high-level statement of the circuit's
desired behavior and requires creating a circuit that
satisfies the specified design goals. Analog circuit
synthesis entails the creation of both the topology and
the sizing (numerical values) of all of the circuit's
components. The difficulty of the problem of analog
circuit synthesis is well known and there is no
previously known general automated technique for
synthesizing an analog circuit from a high-level
statement of the circuit's desired behavior. This paper
presents a single uniform approach using genetic
programming for the automatic synthesis of both the
topology and sizing of a suite of eight different
prototypical analog circuits, including a lowpass
filter, a crossover (woofer and tweeter) filter, a
source identification circuit, an amplifier, a
computational circuit, a time-optimal controller
circuit, a temperature-sensing circuit, and a voltage
reference circuit. The problem-specific information
required for each of the eight problems is minimal and
consists primarily of the number of inputs and outputs
of the desired circuit, the types of available
components, and a fitness measure that restates the
high-level statement of the circuit's desired behavior
as a measurable mathematical quantity. The eight
genetically evolved circuits constitute an instance of
an evolutionary computation technique producing results
on a task that is usually thought of as requiring human
intelligence. The fact that a single uniform approach
yielded a satisfactory design for each of the eight
circuits as well as the fact that a satisfactory design
was created on the first or second run of each problem
are evidence for the general applicability of genetic
programming for solving the problem of automatic
synthesis of analog electrical circuits.
Users
Please
log in to take part in the discussion (add own reviews or comments).