Statistical design centering approach to minimax circuit design

A relationship between the statistical design centering (SDC) approach to production yield optimization and the minimax circuit design is established. It is shown that both approaches can be combined into one coherent methodology, using the same optimization algorithm, and leading either to the yield maximum or to the best fulfilment of the nominal target specifications. Moreover, any other intermediate design between these two extreme cases can be defined by the designer in a sense similar to the one used in L.A Zadeh's fuzzy set theory (1965). This requires only a specific modification of the acceptability region (set) membership function. The proposed methodology is closely related to the income optimization approach to the SDC problem introduced by L.J Opalski and M.A. Styblinski (IEEE Trans. Comput. Aided Design, vol.CAD-5, no.2, p.346-60, 1986). Convolution smoothing techniques combined with stochastic approximation can be used to solve the problem.<<ETX>>