Practicals & Theses

List of practicals and theses at the Embedded Computing Systems Group (E191/2)

Details for Increasing Resilience of Schmitt Triggers against Metastability

Schmitt Triggers, often used to block metastable voltages, can be driven into
metastability themselves. In detail it is possible to hold any voltage value between
ground and the supply voltage value at the output for an arbitrary amount of
time. To achieve these values gets however harder the faster the Schmitt Trigger
can operate, i.e., the higher the output derivatives gets. Of course this could
be achieved by scaling everything which is however not very beneficial. It is
therefore crucial to know which part of which component has a high impact on the
slope and just tune that parameter.

Description

Your task is to analyze Schmitt Trigger implementations on a transistor level
(e.g. by small signal replacements) and identify crucial components a develop
ideas where and how to optimize the behavior. The proposed changes are then
verified using SPICE simulations. Based on the achieved results an optimized
implemenation shall be developed from scratch, which has improved resilience
against metastability.

Required Skills

VU Advanced Digital Design, Transistor Behavior

Supervisors

Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Andreas STEININGER
E-Mail:
Homepage: https://ti.tuwien.ac.at/ecs/people/steininger/view

Univ.Ass. Dipl.-Ing. Dipl.-Ing. BSc Jürgen MAIER (main responsibility)
E-Mail:
Homepage: https://ti.tuwien.ac.at/ecs/people/jmaier

Types

Praktikum, Diplomarbeit

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