Digital enhancement techniques for fractional-N frequency synthesizers

Meeting the demand for unprecedented connectivity in the era of internet-of-things (IoT) requires extremely energy efficient operation of IoT nodes to extend battery life. Managing the data traffic generated by trillions of such nodes also puts severe energy constraints on the data centers. Clock generators that are essential elements in these systems consume significant power and therefore must be optimized for low power and high performance. The focus of this thesis is on improving the energy efficiency of frequency synthesizers and clocking modules by exploring design techniques at both the architectural and circuit levels. In the first part of this work, a digital fractional-N phase locked loop (FNPLL) that employs a high resolution time-to-digital converter (TDC) and a truly ΔΣ fractional divider to achieve low in-band noise with a wide bandwidth is presented. The fractional divider employs a digital-to-time converter (DTC) to cancel out ΔΣ quantization noise in time domain, thus alleviating TDC dynamic range requirements. The proposed digital architecture adopts a narrow range low-power time-amplifier based TDC (TA-TDC) to achieve sub 1ps resolution. Fabricated in 65nm CMOS process, the prototype PLL achieves better than -106dBc/Hz in-band noise and 3MHz PLL bandwidth at 4.5GHz output frequency using 50MHz reference. The PLL achieves excellent jitter performance of 490fsrms, while consumes only 3.7mW. This translates to the best reported jitter-power figure-of-merit (FoM) of -240.5dB among previously reported FNPLLs. Phase noise performance of ring oscillator based digital FNPLLs is severely compromised by conflicting bandwidth requirements to simultaneously suppress oscillator phase and quantization noise introduced by the TDC, ΔΣ fractional divider, and digital-to-analog converter (DAC). As a consequence, their FoM that quantifies the power-jitter tradeoff is at least 25dB worse than their LC-oscillator based FNPLL counterparts. In the second part of this thesis, we seek to close this performance gap by extending PLL bandwidth using quantization noise cancellation techniques and by employing a dual-path digital loop filter to suppress the detrimental impact of DAC quantization noise. A prototype was implemented in a 65nm CMOS process operating over a wide frequency range of 2.0GHz-5.5GHz using a modified extended range multi-modulus divider with seamless switching. The proposed digital FNPLL achieves 1.9psrms integrated jitter while consuming only 4mW at 5GHz output. The measured in-band phase noise is better than -96 dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset. The proposed FNPLL achieves wide bandwidth up to 6MHz using a 50 MHz reference and its FoM is -228.5dB, which is at about 20dB better than previously reported ring-based digital FNPLLs. In the third part, we propose a new multi-output clock generator architecture using open loop fractional dividers for system-on-chip (SoC) platforms. Modern multi-core processors use per core clocking, where each core runs at its own speed. The core frequency can be changed dynamically to optimize for performance or power dissipation using a dynamic frequency scaling (DFS) technique. Fast frequency switching is highly desirable as long as it does not interrupt code execution; therefore it requires smooth frequency transitions with no undershoots. The second main requirement in processor clocking is the capability of spread spectrum frequency modulation. By spreading the clock energy across a wide bandwidth, the electromagnetic interference (EMI) is dramatically reduced. A conventional PLL clock generation approach suffers from a slow frequency settling and limited spread spectrum modulation capabilities. The proposed open loop fractional divider architecture overcomes the bandwidth limitation in fractional-N PLLs. The fractional divider switches the output frequency instantaneously and provides an excellent spread spectrum performance, where precise and programmable modulation depth and frequency can be applied to satisfy different EMI requirements. The fractional divider has unlimited modulation bandwidth resulting in spread spectrum modulation with no filtering, unlike fractional-N PLL; consequently it achieves higher EMI reduction. A prototype fractional divider was implemented in a 65nm CMOS process, where the measured peak-to-peak jitter is less than 27ps over a wide frequency range from 20MHz to 1GHz. The total power consumption is about 3.2mW for 1GHz output frequency. The all-digital implementation of the divider occupies the smallest area of 0.017mm2 compared to state-of-the-art designs. As the data rate of serial links goes higher, the jitter requirements of the clock generator become more stringent. Improving the jitter performance of conventional PLLs to less than (200fsrms) always comes with a large power penalty (tens of mWs). This is due to the PLL coupled noise bandwidth trade-off, which imposes stringent noise requirements on the oscillator and/or loop components. Alternatively, an injection-locked clock multiplier (ILCM) provides many advantages in terms of phase noise, power, and area compared to classical PLLs, but they suffer from a narrow lock-in range and a high sensitivity to PVT variations especially at a large multiplication factor (N). In the fourth part of this thesis, a low-jitter, low-power LC-based ILCM with a digital frequency-tracking loop (FTL) is presented. The proposed FTL relies on a new pulse gating technique to continuously tune the oscillator's free-running frequency. The FTL ensures robust operation across PVT variations and resolves the race condition existing in injection locked PLLs by decoupling frequency tuning from the injection path. As a result, the phase locking condition is only determined by the injection path. This work also introduces an accurate theoretical large-signal analysis for phase domain response (PDR) of injection locked oscillators (ILOs). The proposed PDR analysis captures the asymmetric nature of ILO's lock-in range, and the impact of frequency error on injection strength and phase noise performance. The proposed architecture and analysis are demonstrated by a prototype fabricated in 65 nm CMOS process with active area of 0.25mm2. The prototype ILCM multiplies the reference frequency by 64 to generate an output clock in the range of 6.75GHz-8.25GHz. A superior jitter performance of 190fsrms is achieved, while consuming only 2.25mW power. This translates to a best FoM of -251dB. Unlike conventional PLLs, ILCMs have been fundamentally limited to only integer-N operation and cannot synthesize fractional-N frequencies. In the last part of this thesis, we extend the merits of ILCMs to fractional-N and overcome this fundamental limitation. We employ DTC-based QNC techniques in order to align injected pulses to the oscillator's zero crossings, which enables it to pull the oscillator toward phase lock, thus realizing a fractional-N ILCM. Fabricated in 65nm CMOS process, a prototype 20-bit fractional-N ILCM with an output range of 6.75GHz-8.25GHz consumes only 3.25mW. It achieves excellent jitter performance of 110fsrms and 175fsrms in integer- and fractional-N modes respectively, which translates to the best-reported FoM in both integer- (-255dB) and fractional-N (-252dB) modes. The proposed fractional-N ILCM also features the first-reported rapid on/off capability, where the transient absolute jitter performance at wake-up is bounded below 4ps after less than 4ns. This demonstrates almost instantaneous phase settling. This unique capability enables tremendous energy saving by turning on the clock multiplier only when needed. This energy proportional operation leverages idle times to save power at the system-level of wireline and wireless transceivers

고속 시리얼 링크를 위한 고리 발진기를 기반으로 하는 주파수 합성기

학위논문(박사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 전기·정보공학부, 2022. 8. 정덕균.In this dissertation, major concerns in the clocking of modern serial links are discussed. As sub-rate, multi-standard architectures are becoming predominant, the conventional clocking methodology seems to necessitate innovation in terms of low-cost implementation. Frequency synthesis with active, inductor-less oscillators replacing LC counterparts are reviewed, and solutions for two major drawbacks are proposed. Each solution is verified by prototype chip design, giving a possibility that the inductor-less oscillator may become a proper candidate for future high-speed serial links. To mitigate the high flicker noise of a high-frequency ring oscillator (RO), a reference multiplication technique that effectively extends the bandwidth of the following all-digital phase-locked loop (ADPLL) is proposed. The technique avoids any jitter accumulation, generating a clean mid-frequency clock, overall achieving high jitter performance in conjunction with the ADPLL. Timing constraint for the proper reference multiplication is first analyzed to determine the calibration points that may correct the existent phase errors. The weight for each calibration point is updated by the proposed a priori probability-based least-mean-square (LMS) algorithm. To minimize the time required for the calibration, each gain for the weight update is adaptively varied by deducing a posteriori which error source dominates the others. The prototype chip is fabricated in a 40-nm CMOS technology, and its measurement results verify the low-jitter, high-frequency clock generation with fast calibration settling. The presented work achieves an rms jitter of 177/223 fs at 8/16-GHz output, consuming 12.1/17-mW power. As the second embodiment, an RO-based ADPLL with an analog technique that addresses the high supply sensitivity of the RO is presented. Unlike prior arts, the circuit for the proposed technique does not extort the RO voltage headroom, allowing high-frequency oscillation. Further, the performance given from the technique is robust over process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations, avoiding the use of additional calibration hardware. Lastly, a comprehensive analysis of phase noise contribution is conducted for the overall ADPLL, followed by circuit optimizations, to retain the low-jitter output. Implemented in a 40-nm CMOS technology, the frequency synthesizer achieves an rms jitter of 289 fs at 8 GHz output without any injected supply noise. Under a 20-mVrms white supply noise, the ADPLL suppresses supply-noise-induced jitter by -23.8 dB.본 논문은 현대 시리얼 링크의 클락킹에 관여되는 주요한 문제들에 대하여 기술한다. 준속도, 다중 표준 구조들이 채택되고 있는 추세에 따라, 기존의 클라킹 방법은 낮은 비용의 구현의 관점에서 새로운 혁신을 필요로 한다. LC 공진기를 대신하여 능동 소자 발진기를 사용한 주파수 합성에 대하여 알아보고, 이에 발생하는 두가지 주요 문제점과 각각에 대한 해결 방안을 탐색한다. 각 제안 방법을 프로토타입 칩을 통해 그 효용성을 검증하고, 이어서 능동 소자 발진기가 미래의 고속 시리얼 링크의 클락킹에 사용될 가능성에 대해 검토한다. 첫번째 시연으로써, 고주파 고리 발진기의 높은 플리커 잡음을 완화시키기 위해 기준 신호를 배수화하여 뒷단의 위상 고정 루프의 대역폭을 효과적으로 극대화 시키는 회로 기술을 제안한다. 본 기술은 지터를 누적 시키지 않으며 따라서 깨끗한 중간 주파수 클락을 생성시켜 위상 고정 루프와 함께 높은 성능의 고주파 클락을 합성한다. 기준 신호를 성공적으로 배수화하기 위한 타이밍 조건들을 먼저 분석하여 타이밍 오류를 제거하기 위한 방법론을 파악한다. 각 교정 중량은 연역적 확률을 기반으로한 LMS 알고리즘을 통해 갱신되도록 설계된다. 교정에 필요한 시간을 최소화 하기 위하여, 각 교정 이득은 타이밍 오류 근원들의 크기를 귀납적으로 추론한 값을 바탕으로 지속적으로 제어된다. 40-nm CMOS 공정으로 구현된 프로토타입 칩의 측정을 통해 저소음, 고주파 클락을 빠른 교정 시간안에 합성해 냄을 확인하였다. 이는 177/223 fs의 rms 지터를 가지는 8/16 GHz의 클락을 출력한다. 두번째 시연으로써, 고리 발진기의 높은 전원 노이즈 의존성을 완화시키는 기술이 포함된 주파수 합성기가 설계되었다. 이는 고리 발진기의 전압 헤드룸을 보존함으로서 고주파 발진을 가능하게 한다. 나아가, 전원 노이즈 감소 성능은 공정, 전압, 온도 변동에 대하여 민감하지 않으며, 따라서 추가적인 교정 회로를 필요로 하지 않는다. 마지막으로, 위상 노이즈에 대한 포괄적 분석과 회로 최적화를 통하여 주파수 합성기의 저잡음 출력을 방해하지 않는 방법을 고안하였다. 해당 프로토타입 칩은 40-nm CMOS 공정으로 구현되었으며, 전원 노이즈가 인가되지 않은 상태에서 289 fs의 rms 지터를 가지는 8 GHz의 클락을 출력한다. 또한, 20 mVrms의 전원 노이즈가 인가되었을 때에 유도되는 지터의 양을 -23.8 dB 만큼 줄이는 것을 확인하였다.1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation 3 1.1.1 Clocking in High-Speed Serial Links 4 1.1.2 Multi-Phase, High-Frequency Clock Conversion 8 1.2 Dissertation Objectives 10 2 RO-Based High-Frequency Synthesis 12 2.1 Phase-Locked Loop Fundamentals 12 2.2 Toward All-Digital Regime 15 2.3 RO Design Challenges 21 2.3.1 Oscillator Phase Noise 21 2.3.2 Challenge 1: High Flicker Noise 23 2.3.3 Challenge 2: High Supply Noise Sensitivity 26 3 Filtering RO Noise 28 3.1 Introduction 28 3.2 Proposed Reference Octupler 34 3.2.1 Delay Constraint 34 3.2.2 Phase Error Calibration 38 3.2.3 Circuit Implementation 51 3.3 IL-ADPLL Implementation 55 3.4 Measurement Results 59 3.5 Summary 63 4 RO Supply Noise Compensation 69 4.1 Introduction 69 4.2 Proposed Analog Closed Loop for Supply Noise Compensation 72 4.2.1 Circuit Implementation 73 4.2.2 Frequency-Domain Analysis 76 4.2.3 Circuit Optimization 81 4.3 ADPLL Implementation 87 4.4 Measurement Results 90 4.5 Summary 98 5 Conclusions 99 A Notes on the 8REF 102 B Notes on the ACSC 105박

Hybrid DDS-PLL based reconfigurable oscillators with high spectral purity for cognitive radio

Analytical, design and simulation studies on the performance optimization of reconfigurable architecture of a Hybrid DDS – PLL are presented in this thesis. The original contributions of this thesis are aimed towards the DDS, the dithering (spur suppression) scheme and the PLL. A new design of Taylor series-based DDS that reduces the dynamic power and number of multipliers is a significant contribution of this thesis. This thesis compares dynamic power and SFDR achieved in the design of varieties of DDS such as Quartic, Cubic, Linear and LHSC. This thesis proposes two novel schemes namely “Hartley Image Suppression” and “Adaptive Sinusoidal Interference Cancellation” overcoming the low noise floor of traditional dithering schemes. The simulation studies on a Taylor series-based DDS reveal an improvement in SFDR from 74 dB to 114 dB by using Least Mean Squares -Sinusoidal Interference Canceller (LM-SIC) with the noise floor maintained at -200 dB. Analytical formulations have been developed for a second order PLL to relate the phase noise to settling time and Phase Margin (PM) as well as to relate jitter variance and PM. New expressions relating phase noise to PM and lock time to PM are derived. This thesis derives the analytical relationship between the roots of the characteristic equation of a third order PLL and its performance metrics like PM, Gardner’s stability factor, jitter variance, spur gain and ratio of noise power to carrier power. This thesis presents an analysis to relate spur gain and capacitance ratio of a third order PLL. This thesis presents an analytical relationship between the lock time and the roots of its characteristic equation of a third order PLL. Through Vieta’s circle and Vieta’s angle, the performance metrics of a third order PLL are related to the real roots of its characteristic equation

A Low Jitter Wideband Fractional-N Subsampling Phase Locked Loop (SSPLL)

Frequency synthesizers have become a crucial building block in the evolution of modern communication systems and consumer electronics. The spectral purity performance of frequency synthesizers limits the achievable data-rate and presents a noise-power tradeoff. For communication standards such as LTE where the channel spacing is a few kHz, the synthesizers must provide high frequencies with sufficiently wide frequency tuning range and fine frequency resolutions. Such stringent performance must be met with a limited power and small chip area. In this thesis a wideband fractional-N frequency synthesizer based on a subsampling phase locked loop (SSPLL) is presented. The proposed synthesizer which has a frequency resolution less than 100Hz employs a digital fractional controller (DFC) and a 10-bit digital-to-time converter (DTC) to delay the rising edges of the reference clock to achieve fractional phase lock. For fast convergence of the delay calibration, a novel two-step delay correlation loop (DCL) is employed. Furthermore, to provide optimum settling and jitter performance, the loop transfer characteristics during frequency acquisition and phase-lock are decoupled using a dual input loop filter (DILF). The fractional-N sub-sampling PLL (FNSSPLL) is implemented in a TSMC 40nm CMOS technology and occupies a total active area of 0.41mm^2. The PLL operates over frequency range of 2.8 GHz to 4.3 GHz (42% tuning range) while consuming 9.18mW from a 1.1V supply. The integrated jitter performance is better than 390 fs across all fractional frequency channel. The worst case fractional spur of -48.3 dBc occurs at a 650 kHz offset for a 3.75GHz fractional channel. The in-band phase noise measured at a 200 kHz offset is -112.5 dBc/Hz

Ring oscillator based injection locked clock multiplier

This thesis describes a ring-based injection locked clock multiplier (ILCM) designed with the goal of generating a high-frequency and low-jitter clock. Building on prior research done on injection locking, this design uses a reference frequency doubling technique to push the noise bandwidth of the circuit to Fref/3 to suppress DCO noise to a large extent. A background duty cycle error correction technique is employed to correct errors on the doubled clock that could be detrimental to performance. The design also modifies an existing architecture to achieve type-II suppression of DCO noise in order to fully suppress the flicker noise which becomes prevalent in low process nodes. The prototype ILCM was fabricated in TSMC 65 nm CMOS technology. Thorough testing was performed to characterize the effectiveness of the aforementioned techniques. The circuit achieves 340 fsrms integrated jitter when operating at 5 GHz while only consuming 5.3 mW of power. The ILCM's figure of merit, -242.4 dB, is on par with state-of-the-art ring-based clock multipliers while operating at a much higher output frequency and multiplication factor than previously published work. These results indicate the effectiveness of reference frequency doubling in a ring-based, high-performance clock multiplier design

Fractional-N Synthesizer Architectures with Digital Phase Detection.

During the last decade there has been unprecedented growth in the use of portable wireless communications devices for applications as diverse as medical implants, industrial inventory control, and consumer electronics. If these communication devices are to be low power, flexible, and reconfigurable, new radio architectures are needed which take advantage of the major strength of state-of-the-art digital manufacturing processes; that is the ability to build large, complex low power signal processing circuits, with extremely fast clocking speeds. However, traditional radio architectures rely on analog techniques which are ill suited for the use in modern highly integrated digital systems. A critical component of a radio system is the frequency synthesizer, a circuit which can accurately synthesize and modulate high frequency signals. Traditional synthesizers still utilize a significant amount of analog circuitry. In this work, techniques are developed to replace this analog circuitry with digital equivalents. To do this, a digital phase detection scheme for a Fractional-N Phase Lock Loop (FPLL) is presented. The all-digital phase detector can be used as an alternative to a conventional analog-intensive phase detector, charge pump and loop filter blocks. Another limitation of traditional synthesizers is the difficulty in modulating the frequency of the output signal at speeds larger the FPLL’s bandwidth. A new technique is developed for modulating the output frequency of the FPLL at rates significantly faster than the loop bandwidth would typically allow. A digital sampling scheme that enables FSK modulation rates much larger than the loop bandwidth is demonstrated. The new scheme does not compromise on the frequency accuracy of the output signal. The key ideas presented have been proven in a proof of concept design. A prototype 2.2GHz fractional-N synthesizer, incorporating the digital phase detector and sampling scheme is presented as a proof of concept. Although the loop bandwidth is only 142kHz, an FSK modulation rate of 927.5kbs is achieved. The prototype is implemented in 0.13μm CMOS and consumes 14mW from a 1.4V supply.Ph.D.Electrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60888/1/mferriss_1.pd

Formal Verification and In-Situ Test of Analog and Mixed-Signal Circuits

As CMOS technologies continuously scale down, designing robust analog and mixed-signal (AMS) circuits becomes increasingly difficult. Consequently, there are pressing needs for AMS design checking techniques, more specifically design verification and design for testability (DfT). The purpose of verification is to ensure that the performance of an AMS design meets its specification under process, voltage and temperature (PVT) variations and different working conditions, while DfT techniques aim at embedding testability into the design, by adding auxiliary circuitries for testing purpose. This dissertation focuses on improving the robustness of AMS designs in highly scaled technologies, by developing novel formal verification and in-situ test techniques. Compared with conventional AMS verification that relies more on heuristically chosen simulations, formal verification provides a mathematically rigorous way of checking the target design property. A formal verification framework is proposed that incorporates nonlinear SMT solving techniques and simulation exploration to efficiently verify the dynamic properties of AMS designs. A powerful Bayesian inference based technique is applied to dynamically tradeoff between the costs of simulation and nonlinear SMT. The feasibility and efficacy of the proposed methodology are demonstrated on the verification of lock time specification of a charge-pump PLL. The powerful and low-cost digital processing capabilities of today?s CMOS technologies are enabling many new in-situ test schemes in a mixed-signal environment. First, a novel two-level structure of GRO-PVDL is proposed for on-chip jitter testing of high-speed high-resolution applications with a gated ring oscillator (GRO) at the first level to provide a coarse measurement and a Vernier-style structure at the second level to further measure the residue from the first level with a fine resolution. With the feature of quantization noise shaping, an effective resolution of 0.8ps can be achieved using a 90nm CMOS technology. Second, the reconfigurability of recent all-digital PLL designs is exploited to provide in-situ output jitter test and diagnosis abilities under multiple parametric variations of key analog building blocks. As an extension, an in-situ test scheme is proposed to provide online testing for all-digital PLL based polar transmitters

Low Power Adaptive Circuits: An Adaptive Log Domain Filter and A Low Power Temperature Insensitive Oscillator Applied in Smart Dust Radio

This dissertation focuses on exploring two low power adaptive circuits. One is an adaptive filter at audio frequency for system identification. The other is a temperature insensitive oscillator for low power radio frequency communication. The adaptive filter is presented with integrated learning rules for model reference estimation. The system is a first order low pass filter with two parameters: gain and cut-off frequency. It is implemented using multiple input floating gate transistors to realize online learning of system parameters. Adaptive dynamical system theory is used to derive robust control laws in a system identification task. Simulation results show that convergence is slower using simplified control laws but still occurs within milliseconds. Experimental results confirm that the estimated gain and cut-off frequency track the corresponding parameters of the reference filter. During operation, deterministic errors are introduced by mismatch within the analog circuit implementation. An analysis is presented which attributes the errors to current mirror mismatch. The harmonic distortion of the filter operating in different inversion is analyzed using EKV model numerically. The temperature insensitive oscillator is designed for a low power wireless network. The system is based on a current starved ring oscillator implemented using CMOS transistors instead of LC tank for less chip area and power consumption. The frequency variance with temperature is compensated by the temperature adaptive circuits. Experimental results show that the frequency stability from 5°C to 65°C has been improved 10 times with automatic compensation and at least 1 order less power is consumed than published competitors. This oscillator is applied in a 2.2GHz OOK transmitter and a 2.2GHz phase locked loop based FM receiver. With the increasing needs of compact antenna, possible high data rate and wide unused frequency range of short distance communication, a higher frequency phase locked loop used for BFSK receiver is explored using an LC oscillator for its capability at 20GHz. The success of frequency demodulation is demonstrated in the simulation results that the PLL can lock in 0.5μs with 35MHz lock-in range and 2MHz detection resolution. The model of a phase locked loop used for BFSK receiver is analyzed using Matlab

High Frequency, High Linearity and Low Noise Digital to Time Converter for Phase Adjustment

Nowadays, fast communication systems have become vital for our lifestyle. As a result, the digital PLL fulfils a very important role as frequency synthesizer, demodulator or distributor of clock signals in microprocessors and similar digital circuits. Thus, the correction of the signal using a phase adjust- ment is essential for the good operation of the PLL. In this work, it is proposed a variable slope digital to time converter (DTC), as a programmable delay line, used for the correction of the phase of a digital PLL. The work is focused on the study of the performance of the circuit, through the evaluation of fundamental parameters such as RMS jitter, line- arity, resolution and delay range. Accordingly, it is employed a 4-bit topology using 130 nm MOSFET technology. The in- tended DTC takes advantage of CMOS inverters, due to their simplicity and low noise, and capacitors, for the programmable delay RC network. The DTC functioning is based on the activation of switching transistors to trigger the programmable capacitors, through a code to define the number of capacitors that introduce delay. The circuit is complemented with a simple CMOS inverter as a comparator that triggers when the threshold voltage is attained and an output buffer employed to correct the slopes of the signal. The proposed DTC proposed is a single-ended architecture that achieves 52.50 fs RMS jitter, and the resulting DNL and INL are equivalent to 0.1124 LSB and 0.09773 LSB, respectively. The 4-bit de- lay line has a resolution of 15.2 ps, an area of 0.018 mm2 and a power consumption of 62.8 μW from a 1.2 V low dropout regulator (LDO).Atualmente, os sistemas de comunicação rápida tornaram-se vitais para o nosso estilo de vida. Como resultado, a PLL digital apresenta um papel importante em funções como sintetizador de frequên- cia, demodulador ou distribuidor de sinais de relógio de microprocessadores ou circuitos digitais seme- lhantes. Assim, a correção do sinal utilizando um ajuste de fase é essencial para o bom funcionamento da PLL. Neste trabalho, é proposto um conversor digital para tempo de inclinação de curva variável, como uma linha de atraso programável, utilizada para corrigir a fase de uma PLL digital. Este trabalho é focado no estudo da performance do dispositivo, através da avaliação de parâme- tros fundamentais como RMS jitter, linearidade, resolução e range de atraso. Desta forma, a topologia implementada utiliza 4 bits e tecnologia MOSFET 130 . O conversor digital para tempo é criado utilizando inversores CMOS, que têm as vantagens de apresentar simplicidade e baixo ruído, e condensadores, utilizados para programar a rede de atraso de RC. Este funciona com base na ativação de transístores, empregues como interruptores para acionar os conden- sadores programáveis, através de um código que define o número de condensadores ligados que intro- duzem atraso. O circuito é complementado com um inversor CMOS como comparador que é acionado quando a voltagem de threshold é atingida e um buffer de saída implementado para corrigir a inclinação das curvas. O respetivo conversor apresenta uma arquitetura com uma única saída que é capaz de atingir 52.50 fs RMS jitter, e possuí DNL e INL equivalente a 0.1124 LSB e 0.09773 LSB, respetivamente. A linha de atraso de 4 bits tem uma resolução de 15.2 ps, uma área de 0.018 mm2 e um consumo de potência de 62.8 μW vindo de um regulador de baixa queda de tensão de 1.2 V

Special Topics in Information Technology

This open access book presents thirteen outstanding doctoral dissertations in Information Technology from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Information Technology has always been highly interdisciplinary, as many aspects have to be considered in IT systems. The doctoral studies program in IT at Politecnico di Milano emphasizes this interdisciplinary nature, which is becoming more and more important in recent technological advances, in collaborative projects, and in the education of young researchers. Accordingly, the focus of advanced research is on pursuing a rigorous approach to specific research topics starting from a broad background in various areas of Information Technology, especially Computer Science and Engineering, Electronics, Systems and Control, and Telecommunications. Each year, more than 50 PhDs graduate from the program. This book gathers the outcomes of the thirteen best theses defended in 2019-20 and selected for the IT PhD Award. Each of the authors provides a chapter summarizing his/her findings, including an introduction, description of methods, main achievements and future work on the topic. Hence, the book provides a cutting-edge overview of the latest research trends in Information Technology at Politecnico di Milano, presented in an easy-to-read format that will also appeal to non-specialists