A 500-Mb/s quadruple data rate SDRAM interface using a skewcancellation technique

A quadruple data rate (QDR) synchronous DRAM (SDRAM) interface processing data at 500 Mb/s/pin with a 125-MHz external clock signal is presented. Since the QDR interface has a narrower data timing window, a precise skew control on data signals is required. A salient skew cancellation technique with a shared skew estimator is proposed. The skew cancellation circuit not only reduces the data signal skews on a printed circuit board down to 250 ps, but also aligns the data signals with an external clock signal. The entire interface, fabricated in a 0.35-μm CMOS technology, includes a high-speed data pattern generator and consumes 570 mW of power at 3.0-V supply. The active die area of the chip with the on-chip data pattern generator is 2.4 mm²     

A 100-Mb/s 2.8-V CMOS current-mode analog Viterbi decoder

This paper describes a 4-state rate-1/2 analog convolutional decoder fabricated in 0.8-μm CMOS technology. Although analog implementations have been described in the literature, this decoder is the first to be reported realizing the add-compare-select section entirely with current-mode analog circuits. It operates at data rates up to 115 Mb/s (channel rate 230 Mb/s) and consumes 39 mW at that rate from a single 2.8-V power supply. At a rate of 100 Mb/s, the power consumption per trellis state is about 1/3 that of a comparable digital system. In addition, at 50 Mb/s (the only rate at which comparative data were available), the power consumption per trellis state is similarly about 1/3 that of the best competing analog realization (i.e., excluding, for example, PR4 detectors which use a simplified form of the Viterbi algorithm). The chip contains 3.7 K transistors of which less than 1 K are used in the analog part of the decoder. The die has a core area of 1 mm², of which about 1/3 contains the analog section. The measured performance is close to that of an ideal Viterbi decoder with infinite quantization. In addition, a technique is described which extends the application of the circuits to decoders with a larger number of states. A typical example is a 64-state decoder for use in high-speed satellite communications     

A Wide-Tracking Range Clock and Data Recovery Circuit

A hybrid analog-digital quarter-rate clock and data recovery circuit (CDR) that achieves a wide-tracking range and excellent frequency and phase tracking resolution is presented in this paper. A split-tuned analog phase-locked loop (PLL) provides eight equally spaced phases needed for quarter-rate data recovery and the digital CDR loop adjusts the phase of the PLL output clocks in a precise manner to facilitate plesiochronous clocking. The CDR employs a second-order digital loop filter and combines delta-sigma modulation with the analog PLL to achieve sub-picosecond phase resolution and better than 2 ppm frequency resolution. A test chip fabricated in a 0.18 mum CMOS process achieves BER <10^-12 and consumes 14 mW power while operating at 2 Gb/s. The tracking range is greater than plusmn5000 ppm and plusmn2500 ppm at 10 kHz and 20 kHz modulation frequencies, respectively, making this CDR suitable for systems employing spread-spectrum clocking.     

A 1-V 6-b 50-MSamples/s current-interpolating CMOS ADC

CMOS analog-to-digital converters (ADC's) require either bootstrapping techniques or low-threshold devices to function at low supply voltages. A 6-b 50-MSamples/s ADC in normal-threshold CMOS operates with a single battery cell as low as 0.9 V without bootstrapping. A current-interpolation approach is taken to configure a 1-V ADC system that does not allow more than one V_GS plus one V_DSsat between the supply rails. The prototype takes a rail-to-rail input and works with a single system clock. The chip fabricated in 0.35-μm CMOS occupies an area of 2.4×2 mm² and consumes 10 mW each in analog and digital supplies     

A 30-MHz hybrid analog/digital clock recovery circuit in 2-μmCMOS

A high-speed hybrid clock recovery circuit composed of an analog phase-locked loop (PLL) and a digital PLL (DPLL) for disk drive applications is described. The chip operates at a maximum data rate of 33 MHz from a single 5-V power supply and achieves fast acquisition, a decode window of 95% of full window width, effective sampling jitter of 100-ps rms, and an effective input sampling rate of 1 GHz. The ring oscillator in the analog PLL shows a 62 p.p.m./°C temperature coefficient (TC) and 4.5%/V supply sensitivity of free-running frequency. The total power dissipation is about 600 mW, and the active area is 30000 mil² in a 2-μm single-poly double-metal n-well CMOS process     

A CMOS analog timing recovery circuit for PRML detectors

A fully integrated analog timing recovery circuit for partial-response maximum-likelihood (PRML) detectors for digital magnetic storage is described. The circuit uses a decision-directed minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) algorithm and achieves phase acquisition within 100-bit periods at a maximum speed of 180 Mb/s. It dissipates 76 mW from a single 3.3-V supply and has an active die area of 1.8 mm² in a 1.2-μm CMOS process. At 180 Mb/s, the rms clock fitter is 15 ps and peak-to-peak jitter is 97 ps. The test results demonstrate the feasibility of an analog CMOS implementation of decision-directed MMSE timing recovery for PRML detectors     

A low-jitter mixed-mode DLL for high-speed DRAM applications

This paper presents a salient clock deskewing method with a mixed-mode delay-locked loop (MDLL) for high-speed synchronous DRAM applications. The presented method not only solves the resolution problem of conventional digital deskewing circuits, but also improves the jitter performance to the level of well-designed analog deskewing circuits, while keeping the power consumption and locking speed of digital deskewing circuits. The whole deskewing circuit is fabricated in a 3.3-V 0.6-μm triple-metal CMOS process and occupies a die area of 0.45 mm². Measured rms jitter is 6.38 ps. The power consumption of the entire chip, including I/O peripherals, is 33 mW at 200 MHz with a 3.3-V supply     

A 30-MHz mixed analog/digital signal processor

A multiplying encoder architecture that is implemented in the design of a mixed analog and digital signal processor is presented. The processor is suitable for performing both high-speed A/D conversion and digital filtering in a single chip. The device can resolve the input with 8 b at 30 Msample/s and perform 28 multiply and 28 add operations per sample under typical conditions. The processor is designed for a 28-tap programmable FIR (finite impulse response) filter with analog input signal which can be used for waveform shaping of the modem to obtain the desired transmission performance for business satellite communication and mobile communication. The chip is fabricated in a 1-μm double-polysilicon and double-metal CMOS technology. The chip size is 9.73×8.14 mm², and the chip operates with a single +5.0-V power supply. Typical power dissipation is 950 mW; 330 mW is dissipated in analog and 620 mW is in the digital block     

An 80-MHz, 80-mW, 8-b CMOS folding A/D converter with distributedtrack-and-hold preprocessing

An analog-to-digital converter incorporating a distributed track-and-hold preprocessing combined with folding and interpolation techniques has been designed in CMOS technology. The presented extension of the well known folding concept has resulted in a 75 MHz maximum full-scale input signal frequency. A signal-to-noise ratio of 44 dB is obtained for this frequency. The 8-b A/D converter achieves a clock frequency of 80 MHz with a power dissipation of 80 mW from a 3.3 V supply voltage. The active chip area is 0.3 mm² in 0.5-μm standard digital CMOS technology     

A fully integrated UHF RFID reader SoC for handheld applications in the 0.18 μm CMOS process

A low cost fully integrated single-chip UHF radio frequency identification(RFID) reader SoC for short distance handheld applications is presented.The SoC integrates all building blocks—including an RF transceiver,a PLL frequency synthesizer,a digital baseband and an MCU—in a 0.18μm CMOS process.A high-linearity RX frontend is designed to handle the large self-interferer.A class-E power amplifier with high power efficiency is also integrated to fulfill the function of a UHF passive RFID reader.The measure...     

A 1.5-V 900-MHz monolithic CMOS fast-switching frequencysynthesizer for wireless applications

A new architecture for phase-locked loop frequency synthesizers which employs a switchable-capacitor array to tune the output frequency and a dual-path loop filter operating in the capacitance domain is proposed. It provides many advantages, including simplified analog circuitry, low supply voltage, low power consumption, small chip area, fast frequency switching, and high immunity of substrate noise. Implemented in a standard 0.5-μm CMOS process, a fully integrated fractional-N synthesizer prototype with a third-order sigma-delta modulator is designed for 1.5 V and consumes 30 mW. The total chip area is, 0.9 × 1.1 mm². The settling time is less than 100 μs and the phase noise is -118 dBc/Hz at 600-kHz offset     

A Wideband ΔΣ Digital-RF Modulator for High Data Rate Transmitters

A wideband software-defined digital-RF modulator targeting Gb/s data rates is presented. The modulator consists of a 2.625-GS/s digital DeltaSigma modulator, a 5.25-GHz direct digital-RF converter, and a fourth-order auto-tuned passive LC RF bandpass filter. The architecture removes high dynamic range analog circuits from the baseband signal path, replacing them with high-speed digital circuits to take advantage of digital CMOS scaling. The integration of the digital-RF converter with an RF bandpass reconstruction filter eliminates spurious signals and noise associated with direct digital-RF conversion. An efficient passgate adder circuit lowers the power consumption of the high-speed digital processing and a quadrature digital-IF approach is employed to reduce LO feedthrough and image spurs. The digital-RF modulator is software programmable to support variable bandwidths, adaptive modulation schemes, and multi-channel operation within a frequency band. A prototype IC built in 0.13-mum CMOS demonstrates a data rate of 1.2 Gb/s using OFDM modulation in a bandwidth of 200 MHz centered at 5.25 GHz. In-band LO and image spurs are less than -59 dBc without requiring calibration. The modulator consumes 187 mW and occupies a die area of 0.72 mm².     

A 160-MHz analog equalizer for magnetic disk read channels

This paper presents a 160-MHz five-tap adaptive analog equalizer for magnetic recording disk drive read channels. The design is based on a direct form finite impulse response (FIR) architecture which includes four key features: signal shuffling in the analog domain to improve noise performance, use of a master sample-and-hold stage to improve the dynamic performance and clock jitter of the clock recovery loop, use of an additional sample-and-hold stage to accommodate settling time requirements and reduce power, and use of a time interleaved sign-sign LMS algorithm which permits coefficient adaptation at low power and area. This equalizer occupies 1.36 mm² and consumes only 240 mW with 5-V supply voltage. It is fabricated in BiCMOS technology with 0.8-μm CMOS and 0.72-μm² NPN, 3LM, and DP capacitor     

A 4-GHz clock system for a high-performance system-on-a-chip design

A digital system's clocks must have not only low jitter, but also well-controlled duty cycles in order to facilitate versatile clocking techniques. Power-supply noise is often the most common and dominant source of jitter on a phase-locked loop's (PLL) output clock. Jitter can be minimized by regulating the supply to the PLL's noise-sensitive analog circuit blocks in order to filter out supply noise. This paper introduces a PLL-based clock generator intended for use in a high-speed highly integrated system-on-a-chip design. The generator produces clocks with accurate duty cycles and phase relationships by means of a high-speed divider design. The PLL also achieves a power-supply rejection ratio (PSRR) greater than 40 dB while operating at frequencies exceeding 4 GHz. The high level of noise rejection exceeds that of earlier designs by using a combination of both passive and active filtering of the PLL's analog supply voltage. The PLL system has been integrated in a 0.15-μm single-poly 5-metal digital CMOS technology. The measured performance indicates that at a 4-GHz output frequency the circuit achieves a PSRR greater than 40 dB. The peak cycle-to-cycle jitter is 25 ps at 700 MHz and a 2.8-GHz VCO frequency with a 500-mV step on the regulator's 3.3-V supply. The total power dissipated by the prototype is 130 mW and its active area is 1.48×1.00 mm²     

A 1.8-GHz Spur-Cancelled Fractional-N Frequency Synthesizer With LMS-Based DAC Gain Calibration

A 1.8-GHz wideband DeltaSigma fractional-N frequency synthesizer achieves the phase noise performance of an integer-N synthesizer using a spur-cancellation digital-to-analog converter (DAC). The DAC gain is adaptively calibrated with a least-mean-square (LMS) sign-sign correlation algorithm for better than 1% DAC and charge pump (CP) gain matching. The proposed synthesizer phase-locked loop (PLL) is demonstrated with a wide 400-kHz loop bandwidth while using a low 14.3-MHz reference clock, and offers a better phase noise and bandwidth tradeoff. Using an 8-bit gain-calibrated DAC, DeltaSigma-shaped divider ratio noise is suppressed by as much as 30 dB. The second-order DeltaSigma fractional-N PLL exhibits in-band and integrated phase noises of -98 dBc/Hz and 0.8deg. The chip, fabricated in 0.18-mum CMOS, occupies 2 mm², and consumes 29 mW at 1.8-V supply. The spur cancellation and correlation function consumes 30% additional power     

A fully integrated low-noise 1-GHz frequency synthesizer design formobile communication application

This paper describes a fully monolithic phase-locked loop (PLL) frequency synthesizer circuit implemented in a standard 0.8-μm CMOS technology. To be immune to noise, all the circuits in the synthesizer use differential schemes with the digital parts designed by static logic. The experimental voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) has a center frequency of 800 MHz and a tuning range of ±25%. The measured frequency synthesizer performance has a frequency range from 700 MHz to 1 GHz with -80 dBc/Hz phase noise at a 100 kHz carrier offset. With an active area of 0.34 mm², the test chip consumes 125 mW at maximum frequency from a 5 V supply. The only external components are the supply decoupling capacitors and a passive filter     

CMOS folding A/D converters with current-mode interpolation

A CMOS folding and interpolating A/D conversion architecture fully compatible with standard digital CMOS technology is described. Fully-differential, continuous-time, current-mode, open-loop analog circuitry is used to achieve high speed. Results from 125 Ms/s 8-b and 150 Ms/s 6-b prototypes implemented in a digital 1 μm n-well CMOS process are presented. The 8-b (6-b) converter occupies 4 mm² (2 mm²) and dissipates 225 mW (55 mW) from a single 5 V power supply     

A mixed-signal RAM decision-feedback equalizer for disk drives

A mixed-signal RAM decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) that operates at 90 Mb/s is described. In the analog domain, the DFE subtracts intersymbol interference caused by the past four outputs. The equalized signal is fed into a nonuniform flash analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce the decision output and error signal used to adapt the RAM contents in the digital domain. With a 5 V supply voltage, the power dissipation is 260 mW during steady-state operation. The active area is 4.5 mm² in a 1 μm CMOS process     

A Reconfigurable Mixed-Signal VLSI Implementation of Distributed Arithmetic Used for Finite-Impulse Response Filtering

A reconfigurable implementation of distributed arithmetic (DA) for post-processing applications is described. The input of DA is received in digital form and its analog coefficients are set by using the floating-gate voltage references. The effect of the offset and gain errors on DA computational accuracy is analyzed, and theoretical results for the limitations of this design strategy are presented. This architecture is fabricated in a 0.5-mum CMOS process, and configured as a 16-tap finite impulse response (FIR) filter to demonstrate the reconfigurability and computational efficiency. The measurement results for comb, low-pass, and bandpass filters at 32/50-kHz sampling frequencies are presented. This implementation occupies around 1.125 mm² of die area and consumes 16 mW of static power. The filter order can be increased at the cost of 0.011 mm² of die area and 0.02 mW of power per tap.     

A 0.4-4-Gb/s CMOS quad transceiver cell using on-chip regulated dual-loop PLLs

This paper describes the design and implementation of a quad high-speed transceiver cell fabricated in 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS technology. The clocking circuit of the cell employs a dual-loop architecture with a high-bandwidth core phase-locked loop (PLL) and low-bandwidth digitally controlled interpolators. To achieve low jitter while maintaining low power consumption, the dual-loop PLL uses two on-chip linear regulators of different bandwidths, one for the core and the other for the interpolator loop. The prototype chip operates from 400 Mb/s to 4 Gb/s with a bit error rate of <10/sup -14/. The quad cell consumes 390 mW at 2.5 Gb/s (95 mW/link) under typical operating conditions with a 400-mV output swing driving double terminated links.