A low-power rail-to-rail input-range linear delay element circuit

Delay elements are one of the key components in many time-domain circuits such as time-based analog-to-digital converters. In this paper, a new rail-to-rail current-starved delay element is proposed which not only presents good linearity for the voltage-delay curve over the input range of ground to supply voltage, but also it consumes a dynamic power only during the transition times without consuming any static power. The proposed delay element is designed and simulated in a 0.13-µm CMOS technology with a supply voltage of 1.2 V. Post-layout simulation results demonstrate that the proposed circuit has a linear voltage-delay transfer function with a voltage-to-time gain of −1.33 ps/mV. Moreover, when samples of a full-scale sin-wave input signal are applied to the proposed circuit with a clock frequency of 100 MHz, the power consumption is 30 µW, and signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) of the output delay times is 30.4 dB, making it suitable for use in a time-based analog-to-digital converter with up to 5-bit resolution.     

A low-power DCO using inverter interlaced cascaded delay cell

This paper presents a low-power small-area digitally controlled oscillator(DCO) using an inverters interlaced cascaded delay cell(IICDC).It uses a coarse-fine architecture with binary-weighted delay stages for the delay range and resolution.The coarse-tuning stage of the DCO uses IICDC,which is power and area efficient with low phase noise,as compared with conventional delay cells.The ADPLL with a DCO is fabricated in the UMC 180-nm CMOS process with an active area of 0.071 mm2.The output frequency range is 140–600 MHz at the power supply of 1.8 V.The power consumption is 2.34 m W @ a 200 MHz output.     

Comments on the optimum CMOS tapered buffer problem

Two recent papers, one by Li et al. (see ibid., vol 25, p1005-8,1990) and the other by Prunty and Gal (see ibid., vol. 27, no. 1, p118-9,1992), on the optimum CMOS tapered buffer problem are commented on. These papers claim that an equivalent “short-circuit” current capacitance should be added to the output capacitance of an inverter to account for the increased propagation delay obtained because of the short-circuit current that flows when a real input waveform is considered instead of an input step voltage. The reasoning results in an optimum tapering factor that is dependent on the waveform rise and fall times. However, the propagation delay only depends on the load capacitance and the ratio of the input to output transition times. In a fixed-taper buffer these transition times are equal making the optimum tapering factor independent of the “short-circuit” current. The comments also suggest an improved method of determining the optimum tapering factor in practical situations based on circuit simulations     

A low-voltage, low-power CMOS delay element

A low-voltage, low-power CMOS delay element is proposed. With a unit CMOS inverter load, a delay from 2.6 ns to 76.3 ms is achieved in 0.8 μm CMOS technology. Based on a CMOS thyristor concept, the delay value of the proposed element can be varied over a wide range by a control current. The inherent advantage of a CMOS thyristor in low voltage domains enables this delay element to work down to the supply voltage of 1 V while the threshold voltage of the nMOS and pMOS transistors are 840 mV and -770 mV, respectively. The designed delay value is less sensitive to supply voltage and temperature variation than RC-based or CMOS inverter-based delay elements. Temperature compensation and jitter performance in a noisy environment are also discussed     

A 90 nm CMOS 16 Gb/s Transceiver for Optical Interconnects

Interconnect architectures which leverage high-bandwidth optical channels offer a promising solution to address the increasing chip-to-chip I/O bandwidth demands. This paper describes a dense, high-speed, and low-power CMOS optical interconnect transceiver architecture. Vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) data rate is extended for a given average current and corresponding reliability level with a four-tap current summing FIR transmitter. A low-voltage integrating and double-sampling optical receiver front-end provides adequate sensitivity in a power efficient manner by avoiding linear high-gain elements common in conventional transimpedance-amplifier (TIA) receivers. Clock recovery is performed with a dual-loop architecture which employs baud-rate phase detection and feedback interpolation to achieve reduced power consumption, while high-precision phase spacing is ensured at both the transmitter and receiver through adjustable delay clock buffers. A prototype chip fabricated in 1 V 90 nm CMOS achieves 16 Gb/s operation while consuming 129 mW and occupying 0.105 mm².     

一种0.18μm数字工艺的12bit 100MS/s流水线型ADC设计

描述一个基于TSMC 0.18μm数字工艺的12 bit 100 Ms/s流水线模数转换器的设计实例。该模数转换器采用1.5bit每级结构,电源电压为1.8V。包括十级1.5 bit/stage和最后一级2bit Flash模数转换器,共产生22bit数字码,数字码经过数字校正电路产生12 bit的输出。该模数转换器省去了采样保持电路,电路模块包括:各个子流水级、共模电压生成模块、带隙基准电压生成模块、开关电容动态偏置模块、系统时钟生成模块、时间延迟对齐模块和数字校正电路模块。为了实现低功耗设计,在电路设计中综合采用了输入采样保持放大器消去、按比例缩小和动态偏置电路等技术。ADC实测结果,当以100 MHz的采样率对10MHz的正弦输入信号进行采样转换时,在其输出得到了73.23dB的SFDR,62.75dB的SNR,整体功耗仅为113mW。     

Novel low leakage and energy efficient dual-pullup/dual-pulldown repeater

Transistor threshold voltage (V_t) scaling causes higher power consumption by increasing the subthreshold leakage and short-circuit currents in CMOS circuits. Leakage currents are significant contributors to the overall power consumption of digital systems-on-chip as threshold voltage, channel length, and gate oxide thickness are reduced with CMOS technology scaling. A new dual-pullup/dual-pulldown (DPU/DPD) repeater is proposed in this paper for higher energy efficiency in low-voltage and low-frequency applications. The standby mode leakage power consumption is reduced by 59.11% with the proposed clock tree as compared to the conventional 3 level H-tree operating with a power supply voltage of 1.0V in a 45 nm CMOS technology. The short-circuit currents are suppressed by selectively employing high-V_t transistors in the repeaters. The clock network with the proposed buffer lowers the active mode energy consumption by up to 24.91% as compared to a conventional clock tree under equal silicon area constraint. Post layout results reveal that the statistical spread of clock skew in the DPU/DPD H-tree is also 20.60% lower than the conventional H-tree network.     

Design and characterization of a CMOS off-chip driver/receiver withreduced power-supply disturbance

A CMOS off-chip signal driver that achieves a 2.5-3 times smaller di/dt noise than the conventional design while not incurring the penalty of signal delay is described. It minimizes L di/dt effects by reducing the output signal swing by about a factor of 2 and by providing a controlled ramp rate for the output current. The circuit has a nearly constant output resistance for source termination of transmission lines, and includes a receiver designed for the smaller signal swing. Simulations show a driver-receiver delay of 3 ns for a 7.5-cm line on a multichip package with a peak di/dt of only 12 mA/ns. Driver-receiver delay and noise measurements are also presented     

A 1-V Wideband Low-Power CMOS Active Differential Power Splitter for Wireless Communication

A 1-V wideband CMOS phase and power splitter (PPS) with an RLC network load and frequency compensation capacitor is proposed. Adopting the RLC network load and the frequency compensation capacitor, the gain and phase imbalances of the output can be improved and the wideband response can be achieved, respectively. Moreover, this architecture can not only offer high transfer power gain, but also adopts the tuning current source to overcome the power imbalance caused by process variation. An example with a differential phase condition (180deg) has been designed and fabricated. Based on our measured results, in the frequency range from 3.5 to 6 GHz, the phase error is less than 7deg and the power imbalance is less than 1.4 dB. For wireless local area network 802.11a applications in the frequency range from 5.15 to 5.35 GHz, the phase error is less than 0.6deg, and the power imbalances are less than 0.27 dB, respectively. In addition, the transfer power gain is 9.66 dB under the power consumption of 15 mW and 1-V supply voltage. This architecture is different from the passive PPS circuit, and it has the advantages of no conversion loss and a small chip area with 0.8 mm times 0.7 mm. Compared with the conventional active PPSs, such as using the GaAs and BiCMOS process, this architecture implemented by the TSMC 0.18-mum CMOS process is competitive in cost and possesses the characteristics of low voltage and low power, and it is more easily integrated and suitable for system-on-a-chip applications.     

5.2 mW 61 dB SNDR 15 MHz Bandwidth CT ΔΣ Modulator Using Single Operational Amplifier and Single Feedback DAC

We propose an architecture that reduces the power consumption and active area of such a modulator through a reduction in the number of active components and a simplification of the topology. The proposed architecture reduces the power consumption and active area by reducing the number of active components and simplifying the modulator topology. A novel second‐order loop filter that uses a single operational amplifier resonator reduces the number of active elements and enhances the controllability of the transfer function. A trapezoidal‐shape half‐delayed return‐to‐zero feedback DAC eliminates the loop‐delay compensation circuitry and improves pulse‐delay sensitivity. These simple features of the modulator allow higher frequency operation and more design flexibility. Implemented in a 130 nm CMOS technology, the prototype modulator occupies an active area of 0.098 mm² and consumes 5.23 mW power from a 1.2 V supply. It achieves a dynamic range of 62 dB and a peak SNDR of 60.95 dB over a 15 MHz signal bandwidth with a sampling frequency of 780 MHz. The figure‐of‐merit of the modulator is 191 fJ/conversion‐step.     

Power efficient high-speed DAC for wideband communication applications

This paper demonstrates a power efficient design of high-speed Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs) for wideband communication systems. For Wireless personal area network applications with a 250 MHz signal bandwidth, a 6 bit DAC capable of two times the Nyquist rate sampling is implemented in a current steering segmented 2 + 4 architecture optimized for power efficiency. Along with a proposed master-slave deglitch circuit, several circuit techniques are investigated to improve dynamic performances such as linearity. Implemented in a 0.18 um CMOS process, our DAC achieved a superior conversion performance over the state-of-the-arts, exhibiting integral nonlinearity of less than 0.27 LSB and differential nonlinearity of less than 0.15 LSB. Measured spurious free dynamic range for 251 MHz output signal is 40.92 dB, with total power consumption at 1 GS/s of 6mW, yielding a figure-of-merits of 78.3 pJ/(conversion step*W).     

低延迟低电压电流比较器

设计了一种基于改进共源共栅电流镜的CMOS电流比较器,该比较器在1 V电压且电压误差±10%的状态下都正常工作,同时改进后的结构能够在低电压下取得较低的比较延迟。电路的输入级将输入的电流信号转化为电压信号,电平移位级的引入使该结构能够正常工作在不同的工艺角和温度下,然后通过放大器和反相器得到轨对轨输出电压。基于SMIC 0.18μm CMOS工艺进行了版图设计,并使用SPECTRE软件在不同工艺角、温度和电源电压下对电路进行了仿真。结果表明,该电路在TT工艺角下的比较精度为100 nA,平均功耗为85.53μW,延迟为2.55 ns,适合应用于高精度、低功耗电流型集成电路中。     

A Low-Power 5-Gb/s Current-Mode LVDS Output Driver and Receiver with Active Termination

In this work, a novel circuit topology for a Low-Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) output driver with reduced power consumption is proposed. Also, a low-signal current version of the LVDS driver working with lower supply voltage is proposed along with a compatible differential current-mode receiver. Both the drivers and the receiver feature active-terminated ports that eliminate the need for a dedicated passive terminator for matching. An asymmetric impedance network on the output side of the driver selectively eliminates any reflections coming from the channel while providing a high output impedance to the outgoing signal. For a target signal swing at the receiver input, the proposed termination scheme helps to reduce the driver signal current to up to a third of the current required by a conventional LVDS driver using a passive termination at the output. The asymmetric impedance network consists of a scaled-down replica driver that drives a common drain stage acting as the load for the main driver. The proposed driver topology meeting all LVDS specifications has been implemented in 3.3-V thick-gate CMOS technology. Simulation results show an achievable data rate of 5 Gb/s while transmitting over a 7.5-in FR4 PCB backplane trace for a target BER of 10⁻¹⁵, with power consumption equal to 17.8 mW, which is 25% less than a conventional LVDS driver with passive source end termination producing the same voltage swing at the receiver input. The low-current version of the driver has been implemented in 0.18-μm 1.8-V digital CMOS technology and shows similar performance over the same channel with a power consumption of 4.5 mW.     

Short-circuit dissipation of static CMOS circuitry and its impact on the design of buffer circuits

A simple formula is derived for quick calculation of the maximum short-circuit dissipation of static CMOS circuits. A detailed discussion of this short-circuit dissipation is given based on the behavior of the inverter when loaded with different capacitances. It was found that if each inverter of a string is designed in such a way that the input and output rise and fall times are equal, the short-circuit dissipation will be much less than the dynamic dissipation (<20%). This result has been applied to a practical design of a CMOS driving circuit (buffer), which is commonly built up of a string of inverters. An expression has also been derived for a tapering factor between two successive inverters of such a string to minimize parasitic power dissipation. Finally, it is concluded that optimization in terms of power dissipation leads to a better overall performance (in terms of speed, power, and area) than is possible by minimization of the propagation delay.     

A low-power direct digital synthesizer using a self-adjustingphase-interpolation technique

A complete direct digital synthesizer (DDS) using a self-adjusting phase-interpolation technique is fabricated using 0.35-μm CMOS process technology. A self-adjusting delay generator reduces the periodic jitter in the most significant bit (MSB) of the accumulator in this DDS. To improve the spectral performance, a method of spurious signal reduction that uses offset current sources (OCSs) is newly adopted in the delay generator. Test results confirm that the delay generator produces highly accurate delay timing without the need to adjust circuit constants. The measured spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) is 62 dBc for a dc to 10-MHz output and the power consumption of the complete DDS is 39.2 mW at a 100-MHz clock rate     

Variable Input Delay CMOS Logic for Low Power Design

We propose a new complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) gate design that has different delays along various input to output paths within the gate. The delays are accomplished by inserting selectively sized ldquopermanently onrdquo series transistors at the inputs of a logic gate. We demonstrate the use of the variable input delay CMOS gates for a totally glitch-free minimum dynamic power implementations of digital circuits. Applying a linear programming method to the c7552 benchmark circuit and using the gates described in this paper, we obtained a power saving of 58% over an unoptimized design. This power consumption was 18% lower than that for an alternative low power design using conventional CMOS gates. The optimized circuits had the same critical path delays as their original unoptimized versions. Since the overall delay was not allowed to increase, the glitch elimination with conventional gates required insertion of delay buffers on noncritical paths. The use of the variable input delay gates drastically reduced the required number of delay buffers.     

A new CMOS differential current-mode AGC on the division operation based

A new CMOS differential current-mode AGC on the division operation based is presented. The operation principle consists in detection of both positive and negative envelopes of the differential input signal cycles, respectively. The output signal with constant magnitude is obtained by dividing the differential input signal to the difference between the positive and negative detected envelopes. The new current-mode architecture of the proposed AGC (composed only by an envelope detector and a divider stage) diminishes significantly the settling time, the circuit complexity and the power consumption. The circuit yields an input dynamic range of 15 dB and provides a constant magnitude output signal in the frequency range from 10 MHz to 70 MHz. The current consumption is 5 mA from a single 3.3 V supply voltage. The simulations performed in 0.13 µm CMOS process confirm the theoretically obtained results.     

一款使用低功耗多级运放实现的12位，20兆带宽，18毫瓦的连续时间型过采样调制器

本文在130纳米CMOS工艺下实现了一种具有20兆赫兹带宽,四阶连续时间型过采样调制器。调制器由有源积分环路滤波器、4位内部量化器和3个电流舵型反馈数模转换器构成。本文提出了一种三级运算放大器,它可以在获得高带内增益和高带宽的同时消耗较小的功耗。为了减小时钟抖动对连续时间型过采样调制器的影响,内部反馈数模转化器采用了不自归零的反馈波形。同时采用特殊的版图技术保证数模转换器的线性度,同时避免使用动态器件匹配技术引入的额外环路延时。芯片工作在1. 2 V 电源电压和480 M Hz 时钟频率, 在20 MHz 的信号带宽内, 调制器的动态范围为66 dB, 峰值SNR为64.6 dB, 功耗为18 mW。     

A digitally programmable delay element: design and analysis

Variable delay elements are often used to manipulate the rising or falling edges of the clock or any other signal in integrated circuits (ICs). Delay elements are also used in delay locked loops (DLLs). Although, a few types of digitally controlled delay elements have been proposed, an analytical expression for the delay of these circuits has not been reported. In this paper, we propose a new delay element architecture and develop an analytical equation for the output voltage and an empirical relation for the delay of the circuit. The proposed circuit exhibits improved delay characteristics over previously reported digitally controlled delay elements.     

A 32-Gb/s On-Chip Bus With Driver Pre-Emphasis Signaling

This paper describes a differential current-mode bus architecture based on driver pre-emphasis for on-chip global interconnects that achieves high-data rates while reducing bus power dissipation and improving signal delay latency. The 16-b bus core fabricated in 0.25- $mu$m complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology attains an aggregate signaling data rate of 32 Gb/s over 5–10-mm-long lossy interconnects. With a supply of 2.5 V, 25.5–48.7-mW power dissipation was measured for signal activity above 0.1, equivalent to 0.80–1.52 pJ/b. This work demonstrates a 15.0%–67.5% power reduction over a conventional single-ended voltage-mode static bus while reducing delay latency by 28.3% and peak current by 70%. The proposed bus architecture is robust against crosstalk noise and occupies comparable routing area to a reference static bus design.