An axiomatic model for concept structure description and its application to circuit design

This paper describes an axiomatic model to express concept structures in analog circuit design. The concepts of a structure represent sets of circuit designs, and are defined based on the similarities and differences in their circuit topology, behavior and performance. Similarities and differences are found through concept matching, a main operator of the concept structure. A concept structure is extended with new concepts that are created by combining the features of existing concepts and by exploring new relations between variables through instantiation. Concepts are characterized by a set of metrics, e.g., variety, utility, novelty, complexity, flexibility, constraining factor, and bottleneck. The paper presents a novel circuit design methodology as an application of the model. Two case studies illustrate the utility of the axiomatic model in expressing knowledge structures for various types of circuits.