IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, VOL. CAD-I, 10.

4, OCTOBER 1982 163

Optimized Extraction of MOS Model Parameters
DONALD E. WARD, MEMBER, IEEE, AND KYRIAKOS DOGANIS
Abstract-A common problem faced by designers in simulating MOS
circuits is the specification of model parameters. Typical parameter
extraction procedures determine parameters sequentially, ignoring
many of the interactions between parameters. The resulting fit of the
model to measured data may be less than optimum. Furthermore, the
usual extraction procedures are specialized to a particular model; con
siderable effort is required to accommodate improvements in the model.
This paper describes the application of general-purpose optimization
techniques to the problem of extractng MOS transistor parameters.
With this method, all parameters are extracted in a single operation,
using the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm to find a least-squares fit of
the model to measured device characteristics. The technique is inde
pendent of the MOS model used-new models may be incorporated
simply by inserting the moel equations into the extraction program.
The optimized parameter extraction technique has been implemented
and has proven effective. The ease with which the model may be
changed makes the program particularly useful for the evaluation of
new models.
I. INTRODUCTION
A
COMMON PROBLEM faced by designers in simulating
MaS circuits is the specifcation of model parameters.
Although most MaS models are based on physical theory,
there are always some parameters which do not have physically
well-defned values, and others for which the physical values
do not give the best ft to actual device characteristics. Thus it
is generally necessary to extract model parameters from mea
sured transistor data.
In a typical extraction procedure, parameters are extracted
sequentially, one at a time or in small groups. The value of
each parameter is assumed fixed and accurate for use in ex
tracting further parameters. A small portion of the model and
data from a limited part of a device's operating range are used
in extracting each parameter. A linear least-squares fit is often
used over each region. As an example, a typical extraction
procedure might find values for the threshold- and mobility
related parameters in the linear region of operation, and then
use these values in fnding the velocity saturation and channel
length modulation parameters.
Several difficulties may be encountered with this procedure.
First, the sequential method of extraction does not account
for the interaction of parametcrs, or for the effect of a param
eter in regions of operation other than that from which it was
obtained. Thus, for example, the effect of channel-length
Manuscript received March 8, 1982; revised May 30, 1982. This work
was supported by the Army Research Office under Contract DAAG29-
80-K-Q013.
D. E. Ward is with the Integrated Circuits Laboratory, Stanford Uni
versity, Stanford, CA 94305.
K. Doganis is with the Integrated Circuits Laboratory, Xerox Palo
Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA 94303.
modulation on the linear region (in some models) may not be
taken into account when extracting mobility, and it is ofen
found that the mobility reduction parameters obtained in the
linear region are not appropriate in saturation. A second
problem is that some parameters which have a large impact on
the simulated characteristics may be deeply imbedded in the
model equations. The parameter VMAX in the SPICE level 2
model is a good example of this. The result of these two prob
lems is that the model does not give the full accuracy of which
it is capable. A final difficulty is that parameter extraction
routines must be tailored to a specific device model. This can
produce signifcant overhead in modifying or replacing models.
This paper describes another approach to the parameter ex
traction problem -the use of general-purpose optimization
techniques to obtain values for a complete set of model param
eters in a single operation. This is accomplished by simulta
neously adjusting the values of all parameters to produce a
nonlinear least-squares fit of the model to a set of measured
device characteristics. The result is an optimum set of model
parameters. A key feature of this approach is that the model
code from the circuit simulator may be used directly in the
parameter extraction. This minimizes the effort required to
implement a model and insures that the equations used in
extraction are identical to those used in circuit simulation.
The remainder of this paper describes the use of optimiza
tion methods in more detail. Section II outlines some of the
functional and numerical details of the algorithm, and briefy
describes an implementation of the technique. Section III
gives results obtained with the optimization method, and Sec
tion IV presents some conclusions derived from this work.
II. THE OPTIMIZATION METHOD
A simplified flow chart of the optimization method is shown
in Fig. 1. Here p is the vector of parameters to be optimized;
the vector f(p) consists of the error evaluated at each data
point. The quantity to be minimized is the norm of the error
vector, given by
\\f(
p
)
W =
L
f
k
(P)2 = L (
h(P - Ii
)2
(1)
k k
max
( k' Imin)
where
h
is the calculated drain current and
Ii is the measured
value at the kth data point.
I min
is a quantity provided by the
user; at currents above
I min
the relative error is used, while for
Ii
<Imin
the absolute error (scaled by
Imin
) is used. Any
measure of the error may be used; this definition minimizes
the rms error in the fit of the model to the data. Other defini
tions might be used to minimize the maximum error, for
example.
0278-0070/82/1000-0163$00.75 1982 IEEE