An Ultra Low Power Circuits M.Sc. Course Proposal for the GreenChips-EDU Platform

This paper describes a course offered in the Master program in Electrical and Computer Engineering of Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade de Lisboa, and offered within the GreenChips-EDU platform. The course is on Ultra Low Power Circuits design. The novelty of this course is that the emphasis is on design of analog and digital circuits with CMOS technology using the transistors in subthreshold region, and less conventional low power topologies for RF circuits. The course uses professional CAD tools, currently "Cadence Design Framework II", and on production materials for the use of "Synopsys Custom Compiler", configured with a foundry technology design kit with precise modelling in all regions of operation of a MOS transistor. The design flow procedure is in accordance with common practices used in the industry. The proposed model has been classroom tested in the last three years with positive student reviews on course quality assessment.