PREFACE The increasing demand on high data rate and quality of service in wireless communication has to cope with limited bandwidth and energy resources. More than 50 years ago, Shannon has paved the way to optimal usage of bandwidth and energy resources by bounding the spectral efficiency vs. signal to noise ratio trade-off. However, as any information theorist, Shannon told us what is the best we can do but not how to do it [1]. In this view, turbo codes are like a dream come true: they allow approaching the theoretical Shannon capacity limit very closely. However, for the designer who wants to implement these codes, at first sight they appear to be a nightmare. We came a huge step closer in striving the theoretical limit, but see the historical axiom repeated on a different scale: we know we can achieve excellent performance with turbo codes, but not how to realize this in real devices.

During the first decade following the invention of the transistor, progress in semiconductor device technology advanced rapidly due to an effective synergy of technological discoveries and physical understanding. Through physical reasoning, a feeling for the right assumption and the correct interpretation of experimental findings, a small group of pioneers conceived the major analytic design equations, which are currently to be found in numerous textbooks. Naturally with the growth of specific applications, the description of some characteristic properties became more complicated. For instance, in inte­ grated circuits this was due in part to the use of a wider bias range, the addition of inherent parasitic elements and the occurrence of multi­ dimensional effects in smaller devices. Since powerful computing aids became available at the same time, complicated situations in complex configurations could be analyzed by useful numerical techniques. Despite the resulting progress in device optimization, the above approach fails to provide a required compact set of device design and process control rules and a compact circuit model for the analysis of large-scale electronic designs. This book therefore takes up the original thread to some extent. Taking into account new physical effects and introducing useful but correct simplifying assumptions, the previous concepts of analytic device models have been extended to describe the characteristics of modern integrated circuit devices. This has been made possible by making extensive use of exact numerical results to gain insight into complicated situations of transistor operation.

The application of the Monte Carlo method to the simulation of semiconductor devices is presented. A review of the physics of transport in semiconductors is given, followed by an introduction to the physics of semiconductor devices. The Monte Carlo algorithm is discussed in great details, and specific applications to the modelling of semiconductor devices are given. A comparison with traditional simulators is also presented.

Analog Integrated Circuits for Communication: Principles, Simulation and Design, Second Edition covers the analysis and design of nonlinear analog integrated circuits that form the basis of present-day communication systems. Both bipolar and MOS transistor circuits are analyzed and several numerical examples are used to illustrate the analysis and design techniques developed in this book. Especially unique to this work is the tight coupling between the first-order circuit analysis and circuit simulation results. Extensive use has been made of the public domain circuit simulator Spice, to verify the results of first-order analyses, and for detailed simulations with complex device models.

Semiconductors lie at the heart of some of the most important industries and technologies of the twentieth century. The complexity of silicon integrated circuits is increasing considerably because of the continuous dimensional shrinkage to improve efficiency and functionality. This evolution in design rules poses real challenges for the materials scientists and processing engineers. Materials, defects and processing now have to be understood in their totality. World experts discuss, in this volume, the crucial issues facing lithography, ion implication and plasma processing, metallization and insulating layer quality, and crystal growth. Particular emphasis is placed upon silicon, but compound semiconductors and photonic materials are also highlighted. The fundamental concepts of phase stability, interfaces and defects play a key role in understanding these crucial issues. These concepts are reviewed in a crucial fashion.

Structured Analog CMOS Design describes a structured analog design approach that makes it possible to simplify complex analog design problems and develop a design strategy that can be used for the design of large number of analog cells. It intentionally avoids treating the analog design as a mathematical problem, developing a design procedure based on the understanding of device physics and approximations that give insight into parameter interdependences.

The semiconductor industry is a fundamental building block of the new economy, there is no area of modern life untouched by the progress of nanoelectronics. The electronic chip is becoming an ever-increasing portion of system solutions, starting initially from less than 5% in the 1970 microcomputer era, to more than 60% of the final cost of a mobile telephone, 50% of the price of a personal computer (representing nearly 100% of the functionalities) and 30% of the price of a monitor in the early 2000's.

Design of System on a Chip is the first of two volumes addressing the design challenges associated with new generations of the semiconductor technology. The various chapters are the compilations of tutorials presented at workshops in Brazil in the recent years by prominent authors from all over the world. In particular the first book deals with components and circuits. Device models have to satisfy the conditions to be computationally economical in addition to be accurate and to scale over various generations of technology.

Current-Mode digital circuits have been extensively analyzed and used since the early days of digital ICs. In particular, bipolar Current-Mode digital circuits emerged as an approach to realize digital circuits with the highest speed. Together with its speed performance, CMOS Current-Mode logic has been rediscovered to allow logic gates implementations which, in contrast to classical VLSI CMOS digital circuits, have the feature of low noise level generation. Thus, CMOS Current-Mode gates can be efficiently used inside analog and mixed-signal ICs, which require a low noise silicon environment. For these reasons, until today, many works and results have been published which reinforce the importance of Current-Mode digital circuits. In the topic of Current-Mode digital circuits, the authors spent a lot of effort in the last six years, and their original results highly enhanced both the modeling and the related design methodologies.

The development of computing machines found great success in the last decades. But the ongoing miniaturization of integrated circuits will reach its limits in the near future. Shrinking transistor sizes and power dissipation are the major barriers in the development of smaller and more powerful circuits.

The semiconductor industry is a fundamental building block of the new economy, there is no area of modern life untouched by the progress of nanoelectronics. The electronic chip is becoming an ever-increasing portion of system solutions, starting initially from less than 5% in the 1970 microcomputer era, to more than 60% of the final cost of a mobile telephone, 50% of the price of a personal computer (representing nearly 100% of the functionalities) and 30% of the price of a monitor in the early 2000's.

Electronic oscillators using an electromechanical device as a frequency reference are irreplaceable components of systems-on-chip for time-keeping, carrier frequency generation and digital clock generation. With their excellent frequency stability and very large quality factor Q, quartz crystal resonators have been the dominant solution for more than 70 years. But new possibilities are now offered by micro-electro-mechanical (MEM) resonators, that have a qualitatively identical equivalent electrical circuit.