Introduction
Welcome to the Class-D Audio Amplifier with Tone Control home page
This Project is for ELEN 6350 VLSI DESIGN LABORATORY, Spring 2023, at Columbia University. The course is taught and supervised by Professor Peter Kinget, and Apple Inc. generously sponsored its fabrication.
In this project, we aimed to design and tape out a Class-D Audio Amplifier chip with a tone-control feature.
The chip used TSMC 65nm process, with 1mm2 area and 2.5V power supply. The input audio signal is converted into differential signals on chip and then fed into two identical paths. Utilizing pulse width modulation (PWM), we are able to encode the audio information and then amplify the signal with high efficiency and low distortion. The signal path includes blocks of integrator, comparator, triangle wave generator, non-overlapping generator, pre-driver, and finally an output driver. Additionally, an on-chip OTA collaborates with off-chip tone control circuits, providing the flexibility to adjust the bass and treble aspects of the music. With this chip installed on our designed PCB board, we are able to take input from either a phone or computer and play the music on a 4-ohm passive speaker with ease!