TIC MODELING AND ANALYSIS OF TELECOM FRONTENDS AND THEIR BUILDING BLOCKS Piet Vanassche Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Heverlee, Belgium Georges Gielen Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Heverlee, Belgium Willy Sansen Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Heverlee, Belgium Springer A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 1-4020-3173-4 (HB) ISBN 1-4020-3174-2 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Springer, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Springer, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2005 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed in the Netherlands. to my Parents Foreword nalog circuits are fascinating artifacts. They manipulate signals whose informa- tion content is rich compared to digital signals that carry minimal amount of infor- mation; they are delicate in that any perturbation due to parasitic elements, to delays, to interactions with other elements and with the environment may cause a significant loss of information. The difficulty in dealing with these artifacts is to protect them from all possible attacks, even minor ones, from the physical world. The irony is that they are often used to funnel information from and to the physical world to and from the abstrac- tion of the digital world and for this function, they are irreplaceable. No wonder then that analog designers form a club of extraordinary gentlemen where art (or magic?) rather than science is the shared tra