Designers of portable appliances continue to be under pressure to incorporate more high performance multimedia experiences into ever smaller products with longer battery life. These products have to be delivered to the market quickly and the new capabilities rely increasingly upon sophisticated mixed signal ics working at the boundary between digital electronics and the analogue world.
No matter how big or small the application, no matter how great the silicon content, a battery powered device needs power management. The battery itself needs to be charged and managed and the appropriate linear or switching voltage regulators must be designed in to produce and regulate the supply voltages required by the specific circuits. Such functions, of course, are inherently mixed signal.
