socPod - Systems-on-Chip for Portable Audio

Today's multimedia applications use a huge variety of high performance integrated components (off-the-shelf components and digital processors). They realize digital processing functions like encoding or decoding of video or audio streams (processor cores and software), digital interfaces (USB, 2-wire, flash memory, etc.), analog interfaces (analog-to-digital converters ADCs and digital-to-analog converters DACs for video as well as audio signals) and power management functions (handling a variety of supply voltages). While highest quality in video and audio performance were the main design criteria for long time, a new generation of multimedia products evolved over the recent years. The availability of video and audio virtually everywhere, independent from mains supply, has become a major trend and a huge market for suppliers (e.g. iPod). Now, portable multimedia products have dramatically changed the metrics of the required components. Space and battery life time have become of major concern to the designers, eventually even compromising the performance. These design issues can only be solved by increasing the integration level, combining most, if not all, multimedia functions on a single integrated circuit (System-on-Chip SoC, System-in-Package SiP). Most advanced fabrication technology is required and the challenge of the designers is not only found in the tremendous design complexity, but also in the integration of critical analog and mixed-signal functions, as described above. The proposed project will address these problems for portable audio products and research in new analog interfaces. Oversampled audio ADCs and DACs, well suited for SoC integration, will be adapted for 180nm or 130nm transistors and 1.8V or 1.2V supply, while still delivering an estimated performance of 93-95 dB SNR. A global optimization at system, architecture and circuit level of the signal path from anti-aliasing filter via noise shaper, decimation and interpolation filters to equalizer and smoothing filter will reach lowest possible power consumption.