The University of Waterloo is a member of the Cadence University Program and this web page will outline how Cadence products are used on our campus. This web page only describes the courses and research projects that use Cadence products, other software may also be used but that is irrelevant to the topic of this page. Remember: Cadence is the name of a company - students do not "learn Cadence", they learn about Cadence products.

Cadence tools are used in undergraduate and graduate courses to demonstrate the principles involved in integrated circuit design.

• Undergraduate Courses
  
• ECE 445 Integrated Digital Electronics (Digital IC)
  
• ECE 444 Integrated Analog Electronics (Custom IC)
  
• ECE 455 Embedded Software (Custom IC)
  
• Graduate Courses
  
• ECE 636: Advanced Analog Integrated Circuits
  
• ECE 637: Design of VLSI MOS Integrated Circuits
  
• ECE 734: Low-Voltage CMOS/BiCMOS VLSI Circuits and Systems
  
• ECE 730 Topic 15: High-Performance Integrated Circuits
  
• ECE 740: Topics in CMOS Sensor Microsystems
  
• Research
  
• Dr. Mark Aagaard (Digital IC)
  We use Cadence First Encounter for physical synthesis, timing analysis, and power analysis for cryptographic and other circuits.


• Dr. Slim Boumaiza (Custom IC, Digital IC) (Custom IC, Digital IC)
  Emerging Radio Systems Research Group
  Our group uses Cadence tools to simulate and implement radio frequency integrated circuits (RFIC) for high-performance and reconfigurable wireless transmitters. This covers in particular and not exclusively:
  • Fully digital pulse width modulator for reconfigurable transmitter
  • Digitally controlled 60GHz phase shifter
  • High efficiency integrated power amplifiers
  We also have used Cadence tools to simulate RFICs in a system-level context using Agilent Advanced Design System (ADS) and the Agilent RFIC Dynamic Link facilities.


• Dr. Vincent Gaudet (Custom IC, Digital IC)
  Cadence tool are used in the following projects:
  • Design of energy-efficient analog and digital integrated circuits
  • Design of integrated circuits for forward error control (LDPC and Turbo codes) in modern communication systems
  • Design of biomedical circuits for implantable neural recording prostheses


• Dr. Siddarth Garg (Custom IC)
  Cadence tools are used for 3D IC design.


• Dr. Catherine Gebotys (Custom IC)
  Side-Channel Analysis Laboratory
  Exploiting security vulnerabilities in hardware implementation of cryptosystems offers more opportunities to invade or weaken the functional security measures. Therefore, design for security involves secure protocol implementation (hardware) in addition to the development of mathematical aspects of algorithms. The current research in Side-channel Analysis Laboratory focuses on designing and ASIC implementation of a secure Cryptosystem-On-Chip (CoC). With the aid of Cadence tools, a secure design flow is proposed to bridge security at all design abstraction levels. Cadence is used as the primarily design tools in pre and post-layout simulation of a proposed secure logic style and implementation of Differential Power Analysis (DPA) resistant crypto modules.


• Dr. M. Anwar Hasan (Custom IC)
  VLSI Design of Computational Units for Cryptographic Applications
  Security of data is very crucial in many computing and communication applications. As a result, these days computer and communication systems are becoming increasingly equipped with some form of cryptosystems. This project deals with the development of high speed and area efficient computational units used in many advanced cryptosystems.


• Dr. K. Karim (Custom IC, Digital IC)
  Cadence tools are used in the following projects:
  • Selective photon counting pixel and pixel gamma and x-ray photon imaging arrays
  • Direct detection CMOS active and passive pixel sensor arrays
  • Amorphous silicon multi-mode pixel amplifiers


• Dr. Amir Khandani, Coding and Signal Transmission Laboratory (Custom IC)
  Cadence tools are used to implement a decoder for LDPC codes.


• Dr. Bosco Leung (Custom IC)
  Wireless Communications
  Current research focuses on VLSI circuits for wireless communications. Two projects that use Cadence tools are an A/D converter and a phase-locked loop circuit.


• Dr. Peter Levine (Custom IC, SPB(PCB))
  Bioelectronic Systems Laboratory
  We are using Cadence software to design CMOS-integrated circuits and sensors for DNA, protein, and cellular assays.


• Dr. Raafat Mansour, Centre for Integrated RF Engineering (CIRFE) (Custom IC, SPB(PCB))
  Cadence tools are used to implement the following:
  • Multi-band CMOS amplifiers with adaptive MEMS impedance matching networks
  • Integrated CMOS-MEMS devices for radio-frequency applications including varactors, tunable filters and RF-MEMS switches


• Dr. David Nairn (Custom IC, Digital IC)
  Cadence products are being used to design, simulate and layout analog and mixed signal circuits. Current research is focused on new circuit techniques for improving the performance of analog-to-digital converters.


• Dr. Manoj Sachdev, CMOS Design and Reliability Group (Custom IC)
  Cadence products are being used to design, simulate and layout digital and mixed-signal circuits for low power, high performance applications.


• Dr. S. (Ali) Safavi-Naeini (Custom IC, SPB(PCB))
  Cadence tools are being used in the following projects:
  • Intelligent radio front-end for wireless communication and sensors
  • Millimeter-wave integrated smart radio-on-chip (millimeter wave phase-shifters, low-noise amplifiers, power amplifiers, mixwers, ...)
  • Antenna-on-chip for microwave/millimeter-waves
  • Optical/THz MEMS for switches and variable delay lines
  • Multi-layer packaging service for integrated adaptive transceiver

This page maintained by:
Phil Regier
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
email: peregier@uwaterloo.ca

This file last modified on May 29, 2013.