Evolutionary Electronics: Automatic Design of Electronic Circuits and Systems by Genetic Algorithms (International Series on Computational Intelligence)

306 Pages·2001·3.88 MB·English

by  Ricardo Salem Zebulum

EVOLUTIONARY
ELECTRONICS
Automatic Design of
Electronic Circuits and Systems
by Genetic Algorithms
© 2002 by CRC Press LLC
The CRC Press
International Series on
Computational Intelligence
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L.C. Jain, Ph.D., M.E., B.E. (Hons), Fellow I.E. (Australia)
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Ricardo Salem Zebulum, Marco Aurélio C. Pacheco, and Marley Maria B.R. Vellasco
Evolutionary Electronics: Automatic Design of Electronic Circuit and Systems by Genetic Algorithms
© 2002 by CRC Press LLC
EVOLUTIONARY
ELECTRONICS
Automatic Design of
Electronic Circuits and Systems
by Genetic Algorithms
Ricardo Salem Zebulum
Marco Aurélio C. Pacheco
Marley Maria B.R. Vellasco
CRC PR ESS
Boca Raton London New York Washington, D.C.
© 2002 by CRC Press LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zebulum, Ricardo Salem.
Evolutionary electronics : automatic design of electronic circuits and systems by
genetic algorithms / Ricardo Salem Zebulum, Marco Aurélio Pacheco, Marley Maria
B.R. Vellasco.
p. cm. — (The CRC Press international series on computational intelligence)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8493-0865-8
1. Electronic circuits—Data processing. 2. Electronic circuit design—Data processing. 3.
Genetic algorithms. I. Pacheco, Marco Aurélio. II. Vellasco, Marley Maria B.R. III.
Title. IV. Series.
TK7867 .Z43 2001
621.3815—dc21 2001043571

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To the previous generation, our love and acknowledgment:
Ricardo’s parents
Regina
Carlos
Marco Aurélio’s parents
Maria Leônia
Ageu
Marley’s parents
Maria Heloisa
Marzio
© 2002 by CRC Press LLC
PREFACE
Many books on Evolutionary Computation, and, more specifically, on Genetic
Algorithms, have already been published. When we decided to write a book on
Evolutionary Electronics, we were basically motivated by what appears to be a
turning point in this area: a wider range of applications in synthesis of engineering
and control systems, being now tackled by evolutionary computing techniques.
Other stimulating reasons were: the investigation of advanced paradigms, ranging
from new techniques for multi-objective optimization to more biologically plausible
algorithms; the steady increase in the processors’ speed, which is now making
possible the sampling of larger search spaces; and, finally, the emergence of complex
technologies’ promises to turn evolutionary computation into a valuable tool to be
employed in the design process of many systems.
Evolutionary Electronics is a research area which involves applications of
Evolutionary Computation in the domain of electronics. This new field of research
has shown a potential which is attracting not only researchers, but also electronic
circuits manufacturers, technology developers, end-users from the aerospace
community, and engineers. Their motivations are various: the need of high
performance electronic circuits with more sophisticated specifications; the increasing
number of requirements that must be satisfied by a design in electronics; the
appearance of more complex technologies; the availability of mature reconfigurable
circuits platforms; the trend towards the achievement of fast, low-power and low-
area integrated circuits; the issue of fault tolerant systems for harsh environments;
and the high cost of experienced electronic designers, mainly in analog electronics.
If, on the one hand, one can doubt that standard methodologies will be able to cope
with the increasing complexity of the area, on the other hand, evolutionary
computation is seen as the most promising alternative to overcome the drawbacks
of conventional design. Any tool that can handle these previous issues will be
widely applied in industrial control systems, high performance communications
systems, and in space exploration missions.
This is the first book dedicated to Evolutionary Electronics, and it will be certainly
followed by many others. Nonetheless, the scope of this book is not restricted to
Evolutionary Electronics; our purpose is also to introduce new methods for
Evolutionary Computation which can be applied to the synthesis and system
design in other engineering fields. These new methods differ from the already
existing ones due to aspects of biological plausibility and the need for better results
in real applications. Since the motivation to develop artificial evolutionary algorithms
has been to reproduce, in a simplified way, natural evolution mechanisms, we go a
little deeper into this issue, trying to incorporate more aspects exhibited by natural
systems in our Evolutionary Algorithms. When we talk about tackling real
applications, we mean that our methods are not only intended to be applied in the
electronics world, but to any real design problem that can be interpreted as a search
problem. Since real problems usually involve the sampling of a large number of
potential solutions, and the satisfaction of many specifications, we developed
methods tailored to cope with these issues.
© 2002 by CRC Press LLC
We can then say that, even though the title of this book refers to a very specific
domain of application, it is intended for people with interests and backgrounds
both in computer science and in electronics: computer scientists interested in
acquiring basic skills in Evolutionary Computation; Evolutionary Computation
researchers interested in learning new techniques; and, naturally, electronic engineers
interested in learning about this versatile tool for Computer Aided Design (CAD) of
analog and digital electronic circuits. Furthermore, we believe that this book will
attract engineers and computer scientists interested in biology, particularly in the
field of natural evolution. We try to be very precise when describing the biological
concepts modeled by the proposed algorithms.
The first unit of this book consists of a single and introductory chapter, whose
objective is to define and describe the field of Evolutionary Electronics. This chapter
presents the main challenges and problems in electronic design, describing some
forthcoming technologies as well. We proceed by justifying the motivation that
points towards the use of Evolutionary Algorithms as a tool that can handle future
challenges in this area. This chapter continues by presenting a description of the
setup involving experiments in Evolutionary Electronics, contrasting two different
experimental environments: evolution through simulation and real-time evolution.
We finish by presenting a brief survey on the current state of the art of Evolutionary
Electronics.
The second unit of this book describes the evolutionary computation paradigm,
which is embedded in a class of algorithms that seeks for inspiration in biological
phenomena. Evolutionary computing methods are based on natural evolution
principles. Its most important counterpart, artificial neural networks, takes the brain
computational paradigms as its main source of inspiration. In Chapter 2 the
authors describe the history and development of evolutionary computation and
review the basic flow and operations of this class of algorithms. This chapter
includes an introduction to natural evolution as well, providing the reader with a
background on the area that lent the main ideas used in evolutionary computation.
This chapter provides a description of the main evolutionary algorithms found in
the literature: evolutionary strategies; evolutionary programming; genetic
algorithms; and genetic programming. Chapter 3 complements our theoretical study,
looking into some advanced topics that are currently being investigated by the
Evolutionary Computation community: multi-objective optimization; variable length
representation systems; speciation; and deception. These selected topics are tailored
to the purpose of this book, which is to show evolutionary computing as a tool to
be applied to real problems.
The third unit encompasses a number of Evolutionary Electronics applications.
We report several applications, ranging from the optimization of BiCMOS operational
amplifiers to the synthesis of PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) controllers.
Chapter 4 focuses on the optimization of analog and digital VLSI integrated circuits.
Many different problems are described, such as the optimization of operational
amplifiers using different technologies; placement and routing in digital chips; and
transistors’ size optimization for digital logic gates. Chapter 5 describes applications
in the synthesis of basic analog electronic circuits, commonly used as building
© 2002 by CRC Press LLC
blocks for more complex systems. This chapter includes the synthesis of passive
and active filters; synthesis of operational amplifiers based on bipolar and synthesis
of a Digital to Analog converter. Conversely, Chapter 6 describes applications in
the synthesis of digital circuits, including the design of combinational and sequential
circuits; the evolutionary synthesis of logic gates based on bipolar transistors; and
the synthesis of digital filters. Chapter 7 presents the topic of evolutionary circuit
synthesis through the use of reconfigurable chips. We introduce the basic concepts
of reconfigurable circuits, emphasizing Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs)
and Field Programmable Analog Arrays (FPAAs). We then present Evolutionary
Electronics applications performed over these platforms, and finish by introducing
a more advanced topic, Virtual Computing. Chapter 8 goes one step ahead, and
describes the evolutionary design of more complex systems. We address the
following topics: evolutionary synthesis of Gm-C Filters; synthesis of analog
controllers in general and of PID controllers; the evolutionary synthesis of antennas,
and fault tolerant evolutionary electronics. As a whole, the third unit provides the
reader with a variety of applications, covering the state of the art in Evolutionary
Electronics.
Unit IV of this book draws conclusions over the applications described and
makes a sketch of the future of evolutionary computation and its applications in
electronics.
Finally, the appendixes provide an introduction to four important related subjects:
– Appendix A: MOS Transistors
– Appendix B: Switched Capacitor (SC) Circuits
– Appendix C: Gm-C Filters
– Appendix D: An Introduction to Nano Electronics
The authors believe that evolutionary computation will play an important role in
general design processes, in a world where the appearance of more advanced
technologies increases the complexity of optimization and synthesis problems. As
a consequence, Evolutionary Electronics may turn into a key technology in the
following years.
© 2002 by CRC Press LLC