Automatic circuit tuning using unsupervised learning procedures

This work describes a novel technique for automating the post-fabrication circuit tuning process. A training set that characterizes the behavior of the circuit under test is first constructed. The data in this set consists of input measurement vectors with no output attributes, and is clustered via unsupervised learning algorithm in order to explore its underlying structure and correlations. The generated clusters are efficiently labeled and directly utilized in circuit tuning by calculating the value(s) of the tuning parameter(s). Three prominent and fundamentally different unsupervised learning algorithms, namely, the self-organizing map, the Gaussian mixture model, and the fuzzy C-means algorithm are tried and their performance is compared. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique provides a robust and efficient circuit tuning approach