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Inkjet printing is a promising and challenging technique that could potentially revolutionize large area and organic electronics fabrication. Inkjet systems are designed to construct devices and circuits drop by drop, which would lead to a new paradigm in electronics fabrication. However, inkjet technology for Printed Electronics is still under development and several challenges remain. While there is significant progress being made in the development of electronic devices, such as transistors or sensors, there is a lack of work on circuit and system level design. Designing devices and circuits implies a wide knowledge of process aspects, requiring a complex interaction among concepts, tools and processes coming from different science and engineering disciplines. An explicit methodology is needed to separate design from fabrication in a similar way as in silicon design, to design devices and systems without a deep knowledge of process and materials; thus making it possible to open up inkjet technology to a larger community and undergo more rapid design implementations. In this paper we present the main aspects of such a methodology and we discuss the key topics on inkjet technology that allow us to propose these new specific steps.

Modern complex system design demands modeling on a high level of abstraction together with the system environment components. Such model enables mission level system simulation in the context of its operational conditions. Mission level design using hardware description language AleC++ is presented in this paper. It provides mission and system level verification of a mixed-signal system-on-chip. After validation at mission and system level, this language enables designers to replace some of the components with implementation level models to test and validate the system implementation at mission level. Also, the language provides modeling capabilities that give the designer an opportunity to analyze the influence of low-level technological and environmental parameters to the complete system behavior. In this way a uniform design framework is achieved from mission/system down to implementation level. The application of the language both for mission/system and implementation level modeling is illustrated by an example of the electronic compass.