Performance analysis of a second order delay-lock loop with application to a CDMA system with multipath propagation

CDMA systems require synchronization between the received sequence and the locally generated sequence. This is done by means of a delay-lock loop (DLL). The differential equation of an incoherent second-order DLL has been programmed. The mean time to lose lock (MTLL) of the DLL is a very important design parameter. The authors have obtained this parameter by computer simulation and are able to plot the MTLL as a function of the signal to noise ratio in the data bandwidth. In a narrow-band system, the simulation shows that the effect of the fast Rayleigh fading is a performance degradation even with high mean signal to noise ratio. Assuming a wide-band system, so that the receiver has enough bandwidth to resolve the different propagation paths, the authors propose a modified DLL scheme. The MTLL of the proposed DLL is evaluated using a dynamic simulation of the multipath channel. The results show an improvement with respect to the conventional DLL.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

An Analog Multiphase Self-Calibrating DLL to Minimize the Effects of Process, Supply Voltage, and Temperature Variations

Delay locked loops have been found to be useful tools in such applications as computing, TDCs, and communications. These system can be found in space exploration vehicles and satellites, which operate in extreme environments. Unfortunately, in these environments supply voltage and temperature will not be constant, therefore they must be under consideration when designing a DLL. Furthermore, solar radiation in conjunction with the varying environmental aspects, could cause the delay locked loop to lose it locked state. Delay locked loops are inherently good at tracking these environmental aspects, but in order to do so, the voltage controlled delay line must exhibit a very large gain, which translates to a large capture range. Assuming charged particles hit a key node in the DLL (e.g. the control voltage), the DLL would lose lock and would have to recapture it. Depending on the severity of the uctuation, this relocking process could easily take on the order of many microseconds assuming the bandwidth was kept low to minimize jitter. To date, no delay locked loops have been published for extreme environment applications. In many other extreme environment circuits, calibration techniques have been applied to minimize the environmental effects. Whereas there have been multiple calibration methods published related to delay locked loops, none of them were intended for extreme environments. Furthermore, none of these methods are directly suitable for an analog multiphase delay locked loop. The self-calibrating DLL in this work includes an all digital calibration circuit, as well as a system transient monitor. The coarse calibration helps minimize global process, voltage, and temperature errors for an analog multiphase DLL. The system monitor is used to detect any transients that might cause the DLL to unlock, which could be used to allow the DLL to be recalibrated to the new environmental conditions. The presented measurement results will demonstrate that the DLL can be used in extreme environments such as space, or other extreme environment applications

Low-Jitter Clock Multiplication: a Comparioson between PLLs and DLLs

This paper shows that, for a given power budget, a practical phase-locked loop (PLL)-based clock multiplier generates less jitter than a delay-locked loop (DLL) equivalent. This is due to the fact that the delay cells in a PLL ring-oscillator can consume more power per cell than their counterparts in the DLL. We can show that this effect is stronger than the notorious jitter accumulation effect that occurs in the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) of a PLL. First, an analysis of the stochastic-output jitter of the architectures, due to the most important noise sources, is presented. Then, another important source of jitter in a DLL-based clock multiplier is treated, namely the stochastic mismatch in the delay cells which compose the DLL voltage-controlled delay line (VCDL). An analysis is presented that relates the stochastic spread of the delay of the cells to the output jitter of the clock multiplier. A circuit design technique, called impedance level scaling, is then presented which allows the designer to optimize the noise and mismatch behavior of a circuit, independently from other specifications such as speed and linearity. Applying this technique on a delay cell design yields a direct tradeoff between noise induced jitter and power usage, and between stochastic mismatch induced jitter and power usage

Sub-Picosecond Jitter Clock Generation for Time Interleaved Analog to Digital Converter

Nowadays, Multi-GHz analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are becoming more and more popular in radar systems, software-defined radio (SDR) and wideband communications, because they can realize much higher operation speed through using many interleaved sub-ADCs to relax ADC sampling rates. Although the time interleaved ADC has some issues such as gain mismatch, offset mismatch and timing skew between each ADC channel, these deterministic errors can be solved by previous works such as digital calibration technique. However, time-interleaved ADCs require a precise sample clock to achieve an acceptable effective-numberof-bits (ENOB) which can be degraded by jitter in the sample clock. The clock generation circuits presented in this work achieves sub-picosecond jitter performance in 180nm CMOS which is suitable for time-interleaved ADC. Two different test chips were fabricated in 180nm CMOS to investigate the low jitter design technique. The low jitter delay line in two chips were designed in two different ways, but both of them utilized the low jitter design technique. In first test chip, the measured RMS jitter is 0.1061ps for each delay stage. The second chip uses the proposed low jitter Delay-Locked Loop can work from 80MHz to 120MHz, which means it can provide the time interleaved ADC with 2.4GHz to 3.6GHz low jitter sample clock, the measured delay stage jitter performance in second test chip is 0.1085ps

Hardware simulation of Ku-band spacecraft receiver and bit synchronizer, volume 1

A hardware simulation which emulates an automatically acquiring transmit receive spread spectrum communication and tracking system and developed for use in future NASA programs involving digital communications is considered. The system architecture and tradeoff analysis that led to the selection of the system to be simulated is presented

Fast synchronization 3R burst-mode receivers for passive optical networks

This paper gives a tutorial overview on high speed burst-mode receiver (BM-RX) requirements, specific for time division multiplexing passive optical networks, and design issues of such BM-RXs as well as their advanced design techniques. It focuses on how to design BM-RXs with short burst overhead for fast synchronization. We present design principles and circuit architectures of various types of burst-mode transimpedance amplifiers, burst-mode limiting amplifiers and burst-mode clock and data recovery circuits. The recent development of 10 Gb/s BM-RXs is highlighted also including dual-rate operation for coexistence with deployed PONs and on-chip auto reset generation to eliminate external timing-critical control signals provided by a PON medium access control. Finally sub-system integration and state-of-the-art system performance for 10 Gb/s PONs are reviewed

A Bang-Bang All-Digital PLL for Frequency Synthesis

abstract: Phase locked loops are an integral part of any electronic system that requires a clock signal and find use in a broad range of applications such as clock and data recovery circuits for high speed serial I/O and frequency synthesizers for RF transceivers and ADCs. Traditionally, PLLs have been primarily analog in nature and since the development of the charge pump PLL, they have almost exclusively been analog. Recently, however, much research has been focused on ADPLLs because of their scalability, flexibility and higher noise immunity. This research investigates some of the latest all-digital PLL architectures and discusses the qualities and tradeoffs of each. A highly flexible and scalable all-digital PLL based frequency synthesizer is implemented in 180 nm CMOS process. This implementation makes use of a binary phase detector, also commonly called a bang-bang phase detector, which has potential of use in high-speed, sub-micron processes due to the simplicity of the phase detector which can be implemented with a simple D flip flop. Due to the nonlinearity introduced by the phase detector, there are certain performance limitations. This architecture incorporates a separate frequency control loop which can alleviate some of these limitations, such as lock range and acquisition time.Dissertation/ThesisM.S. Electrical Engineering 201

A Sub-Picosecond Hybrid DLL for Large-Scale Phased Array Synchronization

A large-scale timing synchronization scheme for scalable phased arrays is presented. This approach utilizes a DLL co-designed with a subsequent 2.5GHz PLL. The DLL employs a low noise, fine/coarse delay tuning to reduce the in-band rms jitter to 323fs, an order of magnitude improvement over previous works at similar frequencies. The DLL was fabricated in a 65nm bulk CMOS process and was characterized from 27MHz to 270MHz. It consumes up to 3.3mW from a 1V power supply and has a small footprint of 0.036mm^2