Virtual Simulation Modelling of Electronic Components

Virtual modelling systems are aimed at simulating real experimental operation and results by means of computer technology [Yang, 2009]. Due to the huge complexity of modern integrated circuits, computer aided circuit analysis and simulation becomes essential and can provide information about circuit performance that makes it weighty and expensive to do with laboratory prototype measurements. Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE) was created in order to meet the need for accurate modelling of advanced devices [Senapati, 2002]. SPICE simulation has been used for over thirty years to accurately predict the behaviour of electronic circuits [National Instruments, 2012].

Although it could be difficult to build a digital model to exactly represent the behaviour of an actual device under all operating conditions [Macminn, 1986], software packages such as Proteus ISIS can to a large extent model IC devices using C++ programming language. C++ can be used for building simulation and synthesis models at higher levels of abstraction than other languages. System architects and verification engineers build C++ models of hardware systems for architectural exploration, fast prototyping, hardware/software co-design. Often these C++ based models need to express hardware concepts such as concurrency, structural hierarchy and data types. In the transition of C++ from a software programming language to a language for high level modelling of micro-electronic systems, various artefacts were introduced into the language in the form of library elements to express such hardware concepts [Doucet, 2011]. Engineers can quickly build behavioural models using data structures like queues and associative arrays that mimic the functionality of many hardware components without incurring the cost in memory and simulation time of an equivalent HDL behavioural model. Since C++ designs contains a very rich set of language constructs including the memory and runtime required to create models [Haldar, 2008], Apart from hardware software co-design, the C++ model act as an executable specification to the designed hardware and helped in exploring various design options for the hardware and therefore can be used to prove that the designed hardware was equivalent to the C++ software model [Haldar, 2008]. There are several different embodiments of C++ based environments, mostly in the form of hardware modelling libraries built on top of C++ [Doucet, 2011] such as Visual C++.

Circuit simulation softwares has been widely used by the electrical engineering technologists to study the transients of a power system [Xin, 2012] such as lightning-induced voltage calculations [Montano, 2008]. [Munshi, 2004] modelled the effects of metal shorting, energy storage at metal discontinuities and arbitrary polarity sequence of fingers on a surface acoustic wave inter-digital transducer using C++ program. The model proposed made the SAW device amenable to circuit simulation. A mathematical model and a simulation algorithm based on SPICE was proposed in [Yang, 2009] for a virtual experiment system to simulate real experiment via abstracting experiment scenes, instrument objects and element objects from actual experiment and mathematical and solid model with object-oriented method were constructed. Test results showed that the model achieved excellent performance.

References

Senapati, B. and Maiti, C. K. (2002), Advanced SPICE modelling of SiGe HBTs using VBIC model, IEE proceedings – Circuits, Devices and Systems, Volume 149, Issue 2, pp 129 – 135, ISSN: 1350-2409.

Yang, Y. Zhang, L. Zheng, H. (2009), Research on modelling and simulation in virtual experiment system, International Conference on Computer Science & Education, pp 1090 - 1094, ISBN: 978-1-4244-3520-3.

National Instruments, 2012, SPICE Simulation Overview, Available: http://www.ni.com/white-paper/5414/en.

Macminn, S. R. and Thomas R. J. (1986), Microprocessor simulation of synchronous machine dynamics In real-time, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. PWRS-I, No. 3, August 1986, pp 220 – 225, ISSN: 0885-8950.

Doucet, F. Gupta, R. Otsuka, M. Schaumont, P. and Shukla, P. (2001), interoperability as a Design Issue in C++ Based Modelling Environments, International Symposium on System Synthesis, pp 87 – 94, ISBN: 1-58113-418-5.

Haldar, M. Singh, G. Prabhakar, S. Dwivedi, B. Ghosh, A. (2008), Construction of Concrete Verification Models from C ++, IEEE Design Automation Conference, June 2008, pp 942 – 927, ISBN:978-1-60558-115-6

Xin, L. Xiang, C. Lei, Q. (2012), Calculation of Lightning Induced Overvoltages on Overhead Lines Based on DEPACT Macromodel Using Circuit Simulation Software,  IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility, Volume 54,  Issue 4, pp 837 - 849, ISSN: 0018-9375.

Montano, R. Theethayi, N. Cooray, V. (2008), An Efficient Implementation of the Agrawal Model for Lightning Induced Voltage Calculations Using Circuit Simulation Software, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, Volume 55,  Issue 9, pp 2959 - 2965, ISSN: 1549-8328

Munshi, J. Tuli, S. (2004), A circuit simulation compatible surface acoustic wave interdigital transducer macro-model, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, Volume 51, Issue 7, pp 782 - 784, ISSN: 0885–3010.