Course info

Due to the increasing density and complexity of electronic circuits, simulation has become an essential step in the design cycle of circuits and components. It is crucial to verify in advance the electrical behavior of the circuit that will be sent to the manufacturer. Computer simulation serves as a powerful tool during the design phase or for the analysis of circuits and semiconductor components. It thus allows for a reduction in development costs by partially avoiding the creation of relatively expensive prototypes.

This module is primarily dedicated to the simulation of analog circuits. This technique could, of course, be applied to digital circuits (which are essentially composed of analog circuits), but the main limitation arises from the size of the circuits. The methods presented here would provide an analysis that is too detailed for the studied circuit, which would be prohibitively expensive in terms of resources (memory and computing time) to perform an analog analysis of a large digital system.

”With Electronics Workbench, you can create circuit schematics that look just the same as those you’re already familiar with on paper – plus you can flip the power switch so the schematic behaves like a real circuit. With other electronics simulators, you may have to type in SPICE node lists as text files – an abstract representation of a circuit beyond the capabilities of all but advanced electronics engineers.” (Electronics Workbench User’s guide – version 4, page 7)