Description
The Single Chip Micro Mote (SCμM) is a crystal-free radio chip with an on-board CPU developed at UC Berkeley in the Swarm Lab. This chip was designed to function as the brain of an untethered microrobot with no external components other than a power source required. SCμM also features an optical programmer so that no cables are even needed to program it. With its size and functionality, SCμM has the potential to allow a swarm of microrobots to communicate and perform complex tasks in tandem.
Like every other circuit, SCμM needs power to operate, and one of the most common power regulation circuits is an LDO (low dropout series regulator), which unlike many other DC-DC converter designs, does not require any switching or inductors, which take up a lot of area. This circuit is relatively simple, requiring only a voltage amplifier and one additional transistor, but the challenges in design come from balancing stability, accuracy, and area. The goal of this project was to write a process-independent script that will automatically design such a circuit quickly and accurately in any technology while requiring minimal manual adjustment on the part of the designer. Due to the prevalence of LDOs in integrated circuit chips, the script discussed in this report has many real-world applications.