Design Services Overview

IoT designs require analog, digital, RF and MEMS to work together to interface with the real world, getting each part to work and work together is quite a challenge for today’s engineers.

In a typical integration project, the design starts with a sensing element (often a MEMS device) which generates a signal based on real-world activities. This signal is sent to a signal conditioning analog chip that may consist of low noise amplifier, filter, noise cancellation technologies, and A/D converter to digitize the signal. All of these elements need to be constructed with low power architectures to maintain the performance and power requirements of the application. Compensation circuits are often needed to compensate for environmental factors that otherwise impact accuracy. Due to manufacturing variations of both the sensors and analog chips, a calibration mechanism is required to optimize the product for target applications. The signal chain is finalized with these digital signals transmitted to a processor via I2C or serial-peripheral-interface.

Design Service Areas

SITRI’s CMOS Design Service focuses on designing low-power circuits with the needed circuitry for sensor interface, and embedded logic for better wireless connectivity at lower total cost. This is a turnkey service from specification to tapeout, and can be extended to production engineering including back-end package and test design and project management.

The MEMS Design Service can take MEMS design concepts and turn them into prototype and pilot production status. We can migrate designs to different fabs based on business need, and can also provide package and test solutions for the final product. SITRI’s MEMS services allow customers to focus on their end markets and still have the benefits of customized, state of the art MEMS based sensors and systems.

SITRI’s RF Design Service helps customers build RF switches, cellular low noise amplifiers (LNA), cellular power amplifiers (PA) using advanced RF-SOI process technologies available on the industry’s leading fabs. SITRI can provide complete turnkey support or can assist customers to set up their own design capabilities by leveraging SITRI’s design services infrastructure.