Automatic design of analog electronic circuits using grammatical evolution

Abstract A new approach for automatic synthesis of analog electronic circuits based on grammatical evolution is presented. Grammatical evolution is an evolutionary algorithm based on grammar which can generate code in any programming language and uses variable length linear binary strings. The decoding of each chromosome determines which production rules in a Backus-Naur Form grammar definition are used in a genotype-to-phenotype mapping process. In our method, decoding focuses on obtaining circuit netlists. A new grammar for generating such netlists and a variant of the XOSites-based crossover operator are also presented. A post-processing stage is needed to adapt the decoded netlist prior its evaluation using the NGSpice simulator. Our approach was applied to several case studies, comprising a total of seven benchmark circuits. A comparison with previous works in the literature shows that our method produces competitive circuits in relation to the degree of compliance with the output specifications, the number of components and the number of evaluations used in the evolutionary process.

[1]  Marley M. B. R. Vellasco,et al.  Variable Length Representation in Evolutionary Electronics , 2000, Evolutionary Computation.

[2]  M. A. Keane,et al.  The Design of Analog Circuits by Means of Genetic Programming , 2004 .

[3]  Claudio Mattiussi,et al.  Evolutionary synthesis of analog networks , 2005 .

[4]  Miguel Nicolau,et al.  Introducing Grammar Based Extensions for Grammatical Evolution , 2006, 2006 IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation.

[5]  Dario Floreano,et al.  Analog Genetic Encoding for the Evolution of Circuits and Networks , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.

[6]  Ali Mahani,et al.  A new automated design and optimization method of CMOS logic circuits based on Modified Imperialistic Competitive Algorithm , 2014, Appl. Soft Comput..

[7]  Trent McConaghy,et al.  Genetic Programming in Industrial Analog CAD: Applications and Challenges , 2006 .

[8]  Carlos A. Coello Coello,et al.  Design of combinational logic circuits through an evolutionary multiobjective optimization approach , 2002, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[9]  J. B. Grimbleby,et al.  Automatic analogue network synthesis using genetic algorithms , 1995 .

[10]  Ulya R. Karpuzcu.  Automatic verilog code generation through grammatical evolution , 2005, GECCO '05.

[11]  G. Rodriguez,et al.  Applications of evolutionary algorithms in the design automation of analog integrated circuits , 2010 .

[12]  Esteban Tlelo-Cuautle,et al.  Evolutionary Electronics: Automatic Synthesis of Analog Circuits by GAs , 2008 .

[13]  L. Nagel,et al.  SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) , 1973 .

[14]  Tsuyoshi Murata,et al.  {m , 1934, ACML.

[15]  Rob A. Rutenbar,et al.  Computer-aided design of analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits , 2000, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[16]  Hitoshi Iba,et al.  Analog circuit design with a variable length chromosome , 2000, Proceedings of the 2000 Congress on Evolutionary Computation. CEC00 (Cat. No.00TH8512).

[17]  Xuesong Yan,et al.  Electronic circuits automatic design algorithm , 2010, 2010 Sixth International Conference on Natural Computation.

[18]  Jason D. Lohn,et al.  A circuit representation technique for automated circuit design , 1999, IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput..

[19]  J. B. Grimbleby,et al.  Automatic analogue circuit synthesis using genetic algorithms , 2000 .

[20]  Michiel Steyaert,et al.  An efficient, fully parasitic-aware power amplifier design optimization tool , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[21]  Michael O'Neill,et al.  Grammatical evolution - evolutionary automatic programming in an arbitrary language , 2003, Genetic programming.

[22]  Anthony Brabazon,et al.  Recent Patents on Genetic Programming , 2009 .

[23]  John R. Koza,et al.  Synthesis of topology and sizing of analog electrical circuits by means of genetic programming , 2000 .

[24]  Peter A. Whigham,et al.  Grammar-based Genetic Programming: a survey , 2010, Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines.

[25]  Kangshun Li,et al.  Automated analog circuit design using two-layer genetic programming , 2007, Appl. Math. Comput..

[26]  Michiel Steyaert,et al.  Variation-Aware Structural Synthesis of Analog Circuits via Hierarchical Building Blocks and Structural Homotopy , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems.

[27]  John R. Koza,et al.  Genetic Programming III - Darwinian Invention and Problem Solving , 1999, Evolutionary Computation.

[28]  John R. Koza,et al.  Evolutionary Design of Analog Electrical Circuits Using Genetic Programming , 1998 .

[29]  A. E. Eiben,et al.  Introduction to Evolutionary Computing , 2003, Natural Computing Series.

[30]  Sung-Bae Cho,et al.  Automated synthesis of multiple analog circuits using evolutionary computation for redundancy-based fault-tolerance , 2012, Appl. Soft Comput..

[31]  M. A. Keane,et al.  Automatic Design of Analog Electrical Circuits using Genetic Programming , 2000 .

[32]  Tatiana Kalganova,et al.  Open-ended evolution to discover analogue circuits for beyond conventional applications , 2012, Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines.

[33]  Heinz Mühlenbein,et al.  Effective mutation rate for probabilistic evolutionary design of analogue electrical circuits , 2007, Appl. Soft Comput..

[34]  Marley M. B. R. Vellasco,et al.  Artificial evolution of active filters: a case study , 1999, Proceedings of the First NASA/DoD Workshop on Evolvable Hardware.

[35]  Dongkyung Nam,et al.  Parameter optimization of an on-chip voltage reference circuit using evolutionary programming , 2001, IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput..

[36]  Rui Liu,et al.  Designing Electronic Circuits by Means of Gene Expression Programming , 2006, First NASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems (AHS'06).

[37]  Marley M. B. R. Vellasco,et al.  Comparison of different evolutionary methodologies applied to electronic filter design , 1998, 1998 IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation Proceedings. IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (Cat. No.98TH8360).

[38]  John R. Koza,et al.  Iterative Refinement Of Computational Circuits Using Genetic Programming , 2002, GECCO.

[39]  Georges G. E. Gielen,et al.  Canonical form functions as a simple means for genetic programming to evolve human-interpretable functions , 2006, GECCO '06.

[40]  M. O'Neill,et al.  Grammatical evolution , 2001, GECCO '09.

[41]  Georges G. E. Gielen,et al.  Classification of analog synthesis tools based on their architecture selection mechanisms , 2008, Integr..