A New Method for Modeling and Analysis of Accuracy and Tolerances in Mixed-Signal Systems

Tolerances are a very important property of a design. This paper presents a method for simulating tolerances in signal processing and control systems on the system level us-ing affine arithmetic. The method is compard to simulation based on interval arithmetic or Monte-Carlo method and goes into details of the shortcomings of interval arithmetic. An introduction to affine arithmetic is given and the corresponding model of tolerances is described. The concept of the implementation is given and a case study of a control loop modeled on the system level is presented. This small system is simulated using affine arith-metic and is based on an early prototype of SystemC-AMS.