A high-accuracy DCO with hybrid architecture

In this paper, a novel hybrid digital-controlled oscillator (DCO) is proposed, which is used to improve the accuracy of the all-digital clock generator without reference source. The DCO with hybrid architecture consists of two parts: DCO_high and DCO_low. The DCO_high decides the coarse output frequency of DCO, and adopts the cascade structure to decrease the area. The DCO_low adopts the chain structure with three-state buffer, and decides the fine output frequency of DCO. Compared with traditional cascade DCO, the proposed hybrid DCO features higher precision with less inherent delay. Therefore the clock generator can tolerate process, voltage and temperature (PVT) variation and meet the needs of different conditions. The DCO is designed in SMIC 180 nm CMOS process with 0.021 mm² chip area. The output frequency is adjusted from 15-120 MHz. The frequency error is less than 0.83% at 25 MHz with 1.6-1.8 V supply voltage and 0-80 ℃ temperature variations in TT, FF, SS corners.     

Low power FSK transmitter using all-digital PLL for IEEE 802.15.4g application

This paper presents low power frequency shift keying (FSK) transmitter using all-digital pll (ADPLL) for IEEE 802.15.4g application. In order to operate at low-power and to integrate a small die area, the ADPLL is adopted in transmitter. The phase noise of the ADPLL is improved by using a fine resolution time to digital converter (TDC) and digitally controlled oscillator (DCO). The resolution of the proposed TDC is improved by using a phase-interpolator, which divides the inverter delay time and the time amplifier, which amplifies the time difference between the reference frequency and the DCO clock. The phase noise of the proposed ADPLL is also improved by using a fine resolution DCO with an active capacitor. To cover the wide tuning range and to operate at a low-power, a two-step coarse tuning scheme with a metal insulator metal capacitor and an active inductor is used. The FSK transmitter is implemented in 0.18 μm 1-poly 6-metal CMOS technology. The die area of the transmitter including ADPLL is 2.2 mm². The power consumption of the ADPLL and transmitter is 12.43 and 22.7 mW when the output power level of the transmitter is ?1.6 dBm at 1.8 V supply voltage, respectively. The frequency resolution of the TDC is 1.25 ps. The effective DCO frequency resolution with the active capacitance and sigma-delta modulator is 2.5 Hz. The phase noise of the ADPLL output at 1.83 GHz is ?121.5 dBc/Hz with a 1 MHz offset.     

A CMOS MF energy harvesting and data demodulator receiver for wide area low duty cycle applications with 250 mV start-up voltage

A low voltage start-up energy harvesting medium frequency receiver is presented, for use as the power and synchronisation part of a remote sensor node in a wide area industrial or agricultural application. The use of embedded low bandwidth network synchronisation data permits very low operational duty cycle without the need for real time clocks or wake up receivers at each node with their associated continuous power drain. The receiver consists of a rectifier, a power management unit and a phase-shift keying demodulator. The rectifier is optimised for low start-up and operating voltage rather than power efficiency. With standard MOS thresholds the rectifier can cold start with only 250 mV peak antenna input, and useful battery charging is delivered with 330 mV peak input. The QPSK demodulator consumes 1.27 μW with a supply voltage of 630 mV at a data rate of 1.6 kbps with 1 MHz carrier frequency. The IC is implemented in a standard threshold 0.18 μm CMOS technology, occupies 0.54 mm² and can deliver 10.3 μW at 3 V to an external battery or capacitor.     

面向电荷泵的占空比可调四相时钟发生电路北大核心

针对传统四相时钟发生电路产生的时钟波形信号易发生交叠、驱动电荷泵易发生漏电等问题，提出了一种占空比可调四相时钟发生电路。电路在每两相可能出现交叠的时钟信号之间都增加了延时单元模块，通过控制延时时间对输出时钟信号的占空比进行调节，避免了时钟相位的交叠。对延时单元进行了改进，在外接偏置电压条件下，实现了延时可控。基于55 nm CMOS工艺的仿真结果表明，在10～50 MHz时钟输入频率范围内，该四相时钟发生电路可以稳定输出四相不交叠时钟信号，并能在1.2 V电压下驱动十级电荷泵高效泵入11.2 V。流片测试结果表明，该四相时钟发生电路能够产生不相交叠的四相时钟波形，时钟输出相位满足电荷泵驱动需求。     

A compact ADPLL based on symmetrical binary frequency searching with the same circuit

A compact all-digital phase-locked loop (C-ADPLL) based on symmetrical binary frequency searching (BFS) with the same circuit is presented in this paper. The minimising relative frequency variation error Δη (MFE) rule is derived as guidance of design and is used to weigh the accuracy of the digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) clock frequency. The symmetrical BFS is used in the coarse-tuning process and the fine-tuning process of DCO clock frequency to achieve the minimum Δη of the locked DCO clock, which simplifies the circuit architecture and saves the die area. The C-ADPLL is implemented in a 0.13 μm one-poly-eight-metal (1P8M) CMOS process and the on-chip area is only 0.043 mm², which is much smaller. The measurement results show that the peak-to-peak (Pk-Pk) jitter and the root-mean-square jitter of the DCO clock frequency are 270 ps at 72.3 MHz and 42 ps at 79.4 MHz, respectively, while the power consumption of the proposed ADPLL is only 2.7 mW (at 115.8 MHz) with a 1.2 V power supply. The measured Δη is not more than 1.14%. Compared with other ADPLLs, the proposed C-ADPLL has simpler architecture, smaller size and lower Pk-Pk jitter.     

A low-cost, wide-band DCO with an on-chip 3-D solenoid inductor in 0.13 μm digital CMOS

This paper presents a wide band, fine-resolution digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) with an on-chip 3-D solenoid inductor using the 0.13 μm digital CMOS process. The on-chip solenoid inductor is vertically constructed by using Metal and Via layers with a horizontal scalability. Compared to a spiral inductor, it has the advantage of occupying a small area and this is due to its 3-D structure. To control the frequency of the DCO, active capacitor and active inductor are tuned digitally. To cover the wide tuning range, a three-step coarse tuning scheme is used. In addition, the DCO gain needs to be calibrated digitally to compensate for gain variations. The DCO with solenoid inductor is fabricated in 0.13 μm process and the die area of the solenoid inductor is 0.013 mm². The DCO tuning range is about 52 % at 4.1 GHz, and the power consumption is 6.6 mW from a 1.2 V supply voltage. An effective frequency resolution is 0.14 kHz. The measured phase noise of the DCO output at 5.195 GHz is ?110.17 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset.     

A low power DLL based clock and data recovery circuit with wide range anti-harmonic lock

This paper presents a wide frequency range CDR circuit for second generation AiPi+ intra-panel interface. The speed of the proposed clock and data recovery is increased to 1.25 Gbps compared with conventional AiPi+. The DLL-based CDR architecture is adopted to generate multi-phase clocks. We propose a simple scheme for a frequency detector (FD) to overcome the limited frequency range and false lock problem of a conventional delay-locked loop (DLL) to reduce the complexity. In addition, a duty cycle corrector that limits the maximum pulse width is used to avoid the problem of missing clock edges due to the mismatches between rising and falling time of delay cells in the VCDL. Also, the proposed simple DLL architecture comprised of frequency and phase detectors has better process-portability. The proposed CDR is implemented in 0.18 μm technology and the active die area is 660 × 250 μm. The implemented DLL covers a frequency range from 62 to 128 MHz, which is limited only by the characteristics of the delay cell. The peak-to-peak jitter is less than 13 ps when the input frequency is 128 MHz, and the power consumption of the CDR except the input buffer, equalizer, and de-serializer is 5.94 mW from the supply voltage of 1.8 V.     

A synthesizable pseudo fractional-N clock generator with improved duty cycle output

A proposed synthesizable pseudo fractional-N clock generator with improved duty cycle output is presented by the pseudo fractional-N frequency synthesizer unit for SoC chips and the dynamic frequency scaling applications. The different clock frequencies can be generated by following the design flowchart. It has been fabricated in a 0.13 μm CMOS technology and work with a supply voltage of 1.2 V. According to measured results, the frequency range of the proposed synthesizable pseudo fractional-N clock generator is from 12.5 MHz to 1 GHz and the peak-to-peak jitter is less than 5% of the output period. Duty cycle error rate of the output clock frequency is 1.5% and the measured power dissipation of the pseudo fractional-N frequency synthesizer unit is 146 μW at 304 MHz.     

A miniature high-efficiency fully digital adaptive voltage scaling buck converter

A miniature high-efficiency fully digital adaptive voltage scaling (AVS) buck converter is proposed in this paper. The pulse skip modulation with flexible duty cycle (FD-PSM) is used in the AVS controller, which simplifies the circuit architecture (<170 gates) and greatly saves the die area and the power consumption. The converter is implemented in a 0.13-μm one-poly-eight-metal (1P8 M) complementary metal oxide semiconductor process and the active on-chip area of the controller is only 0.003 mm², which is much smaller. The measurement results show that when the operating frequency of the digital load scales dynamically from 25.6 MHz to 112.6 MHz, the supply voltage of which can be scaled adaptively from 0.84 V to 1.95 V. The controller dissipates only 17.2 μW, while the supply voltage of the load is 1 V and the operating frequency is 40 MHz.     

A low-power and low-phase-noise LC digitally controlled oscillator featuring a novel capacitor bank

A monolithic low-power and low-phase-noise digitally controlled oscillator(DCO) based on a symmetric spiral inductor with center-tap and novel capacitor bank was implemented in a 0.18μm CMOS process with six metal layers.A third new way to change capacitance is proposed and implemented in this work.Results show that the phase noise at 1 MHz offset frequency is below -122.5 dBc/Hz while drawing a current of only 4.8 mA from a 1.8 V supply. Also,the DCO can work at low supply voltage conditions with a 1.6 ...     

The design of an All-Digital Phase-Locked Loop with low jitter based on ISF analysis

A low jitter All-Digital Phase-Locked Loop （ADPLL） used as a clock generator is designed. The Digital-Controlled Oscillator （DCO） for this ADPLL is a seven-stage ring oscillator with the delay of each stage changeable. Based on the Impulse Sensitivity Function （ISF） analysis, an effective way is proposed to reduce the ADPLL＇s jitter by the careful design of the sizes of the inverters used in the DCO with a simple architecture other than a complex one. The ADPLL is implemented in a 0.18μm CMOS process with 1.SV supply voltage, occupies 0.046mm^2 of on-chip area. According to the measured results, the ADPLL can operate from 108MHz to 304MHz, and the peak-to-peak jitter is 139ps when the DCO＇s output frequency is 188MHz.     

PMOS-switching dual-path charge pump in standard twin-well CMOS technology

In this article a new charge pump circuit is presented, which is feasible for implementation with the standard twin-well CMOS process. The proposed charge pump employs PMOS-switching dual charge-transfer paths and a simple two-phase clock. Since charge transfer switches are fully turned ON during each half of the clock cycle, they transfer charges completely from the present stage to the next stage without suffering threshold voltage drop. During one clock cycle, the pump transfers charges twice through two pumping paths which are operating alternately. Test chips have been fabricated in a 0.35-μm twin-well CMOS process. The output voltage of a 4-stage charge pump with each pumping capacitor of 7.36 pF measures 6.7 V under a 1.5 V power supply and 20 MHz clock frequency. It can supply a maximum load current of about 180 μA. Although the proposed circuit exhibits somewhat inferior performances against triple-well charge pumps using additional mask and process steps, it shows at least 60% higher voltage gain at V _DD = 0.9 V, approximately 10% higher peak power efficiency at V _DD = 1.5 V, much larger output current drivability and faster initial output rising than traditional twin-well charge pumps. This new pumping efficient circuit is suitable for design applications with a low-cost standard twin-well CMOS process.     

A high-resolution multi-phase delay-locked loop with offset locking technique

In this work, we propose a new type of high-resolution delay-locked loop (DLL) which achieves the performance of high-resolution output by offset locking techniques without restrictions of intrinsic delay in the delay cell. Compared to traditional multi-phase clock generator, this architecture has the features of small size, low jitters, low-power consumption and high resolution. This DLL has been fabricated in 0.35 μm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process. The measured root-mean-square and peak-to-peak jitters are 2.89 ps and 31.1 ps at 250 MHz, respectively. The power dissipation is 68 mW for a supply voltage of 3.3 V. The maximum resolution of this work is 144 p and the intrinsic delay of 0.35 μm CMOS process is 220 ps. Comparing with intrinsic delay, the improvement of maximum resolution is 34.5%.     

A clock generator with cascaded dynamic frequency counting loops for wide multiplication range applications

This work presents a clock generator with cascaded dynamic frequency counting (DFC) loops for wide multiplication range applications. The DFC loop, which uses variable time period to estimate and tune the frequency of the digitally controlled oscillator (DCO), enhances the resolution of frequency detection. The conventional phase-frequency detector (PFD) and programmable divider are replaced with a digital arithmetic comparator and a DCO timing counter. The value in the DCO timing counter is separated into quotient and remainder vectors. A threshold region is set in the remainder vector to reduce the influence of jitter variation in frequency detection. The loop stability can be retained by cascading two DFC loops when the multiplication factor (N) is large. The proposed clock generator achieves a multiplication range from 4 to 13 888 with output peak-to-peak jitter less than 2.8% of clock period. A test chip for the proposed clock generator is fabricated in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process with core area of 0.16 mm/sup 2/. Power consumption is 15 mW @ 378 MHz with 1.8-V supply voltage.     

A 0.5 V offset cancelled latch comparator in standard 0.18 μm CMOS process

This paper presents a new 0.5 V high-speed dynamic latch comparator with built-in foreground offset cancellation capability and rail-to-rail input range. Traditional latch comparators lose their speed performance in low voltage condition, especially in sub-1V applications. The proposed latch comparator utilizes a speed-up technique based on a novel boosting method to mitigate the low voltage imperfections on circuit operation. Employing a new offset cancellation technique based on the same boosting capacitors is another key idea. This enhances the accuracy of the ultra low-voltage latch comparators and relaxes the need for preamplifier stage, which is conventionally used in the low offset latch comparator. The performed Monte Carlo simulations over corners in 0.18 μm standard CMOS process show the improvement of input referred offset voltage with a standard deviation of 29.9 mV/299 μV before and after offset cancellation, respectively. The designed comparator dissipates 34 μW power from 0.5 V voltage supply while operating in 200 MHz clock frequency and detects 1 mV input difference.     

A sub-1-V, high precision, ultra low-power, process trimmable, resistorless voltage reference with low cost 90-nm standard CMOS technology

A low power voltage reference generator operating with a supply voltage ranging from 1.6 to 3.6?V has been implemented in a 90-nm standard CMOS technology. The reference is based on MOSFETs that are biased in the weak inversion region to consume nanowatts of power and uses no resistors. The maximum supply current at 3.6?V and at 125°C is 173?nA. It provides a 771?mV voltage reference. A temperature coefficient of 7.5?ppm/°C is achieved at best and 39.5?ppm/°C on average, in a range from ?40 to 125°C, as the combined effect of a suppression of the temperature dependence of mobility and the compensation of the threshold voltage temperature variation. Several process parameters affect the performance of the proposed voltage reference circuit, so a process adjustment aimed at correcting errors in the reference voltage caused by these variations is dealt with. The total block area is 0.03?mm².     

A 1.8-V 91-dB DR second-order ΣΔ modulator in 0.18-μm CMOS technology

This paper deals with the implementation of a second-order ΣΔ modulator in 0.18-μm CMOS technology. The analog-to-digital converter structure combines a 1-bit approach along with a high oversampling ratio (OSR). A silicon circuit prototype, including the modulator itself, a current reference, and the clock signals generator, was designed to operate with a 1.8-V supply, fabricated and tested. Measured values of 87 dB and 91 dB were obtained for the signal-to-noise-plus-distortion ratio (SNDR) and the dynamic range (DR), respectively, for a clock frequency of 8 MHz and an OSR of 256. The effective number of bits (ENOB) was above 14. The experimental performance of the ΣΔ modulator maintains a good level over a modulator clock range higher than 16 MHz, featuring an ENOB equal to 13 at 16 MHz.     

A wide frequency range delay line for fast-locking and low power delay-locked-loops

A voltage controlled delay cell with wide frequency range is presented in this paper. The delay-line which is resulted by connecting five series of delay cells generating a wide range of delay from 1.9 to 13.24 ns. It can be used in an analog delay locked loop. The linear characteristic of the circuit with respect to the conventional delay line structures is improved, and a better performance of noise is obtained using differential structure. This circuit is designed by ADS software and TSMC CMOS 0.18 μm technology, with supply voltage 1.8 V. By changing control voltage from 0.335 to 1.8 V in delay line, a wide range of frequency from 75.52 to 917.43 MHz will be covered. Simulation results show that the proposed delay line has power consumption of maximum 3.77 mW at frequency of 75.52 MHz. It also shows that increasing of frequency will reduce power dissipation which is the one of the main characteristics of this novel circuit. Moreover, the delay locked loop which uses these delay cells has a very high lock speed so that the maximum lock time in just five clock cycles.     

一种新型超高速高精度时钟占空比校准电路

设计了一种超高速高精度时钟占空比校准电路。采用一种新的脉冲宽度校准单元,通过控制电压调整时钟上升、下降时间来实现占空比调整。同时,设计了一种时钟放大模块,降低了占空比校准单元对输入时钟幅度的要求,提高了占空比校准精度。分析了各电路模块的作用以及对整体性能的影响。采用SMIC 65 nm CMOS工艺,在1.8 V电源电压下对各模块以及整体电路进行仿真验证。仿真结果表明,该时钟占空比校准电路能对输入频率为1～4 GHz、占空比为20%～80%的时钟进行精确校准,校准后的占空比为(50±1)%,系统稳定时间为200个输入时钟周期,功耗为10 mW。     

A high-speed four-phase clock generator for low-power on-chip SerDes applications

In this work we present a low-power, low-area and high-speed fully CMOS quadrature clock generator for on-chip SerDes applications. The device utilizes a couple of differential prescalers for high speed frequency division and four duty cycle adjusters to set the duty cycle of the produced clock signals at 50% of the clock period. The circuit was implemented with the STMicroelectronics 65 nm process technology using only 125 transistors and it occupies an active area of under 2.34 μm². With a power supply of 1.1 V the complete circuit consumes 89.56 μW at room temperature.