Achieving Energy Efficiency in Analogue and Mixed Signal Integrated Circuit Design

The evolution of wireless communications is obviously linked to the power consumption of devices, which also continues increasing due to the growing amount of data and transmission speed required by the new communication standards. In contrast, the energy available in portable batteries does not grow at the same rate, improving only their capacity in a 10% every two years (Shahab, 2010). This leads to an increasingly gap between power needs and battery capacity. Therefore, energy efficiency of electronics systems has become a crucial factor to maximize the lifetime of the available batteries and one of the most important research topics in integrated circuits design in recent years.