45 research outputs found

    Power-efficient high-speed interface circuit techniques

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    Inter- and intra-chip connections have become the new challenge to enable the scaling of computing systems, ranging from mobile devices to high-end servers. Demand for aggregate I/O bandwidth has been driven by applications including high-speed ethernet, backplane micro-servers, memory, graphics, chip-to-chip and network onchip. I/O circuitry is becoming the major power consumer in SoC processors and memories as the increasing bandwidth demands larger per-pin data rate or larger I/O pin count per component. The aggregate I/O bandwidth has approximately doubled every three to four years across a diverse range of standards in different applications. However, in order to keep pace with these standards enabled in part by process-technology scaling, we will require more than just device scaling in the near future. New energy-efficient circuit techniques must be proposed to enable the next generations of handheld and high-performance computers, given the thermal and system-power limits they start facing. ^ In this work, we are proposing circuit architectures that improve energy efficiency without decreasing speed performance for the most power hungry circuits in high speed interfaces. By the introduction of a new kind of logic operators in CMOS, called implication operators, we implemented a new family of high-speed frequency dividers/prescalers with reduced footprint and power consumption. New techniques and circuits for clock distribution, for pre-emphasis and for driver at the transmitter side of the I/O circuitry have been proposed and implemented. At the receiver side, new DFE architecture and CDR have been proposed and have been proven experimentally

    A GHz-range, High-resolution Multi-modulus Prescaler for Extreme Environment Applications

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    The generation of a precise, low-noise, reliable clock source is critical to developing mixed-signal and digital electronic systems. The applications of such a clock source are greatly expanded if the clock source can be configured to output different clock frequencies. The phase-locked loop (PLL) is a well-documented architecture for realizing this configurable clock source. Principle to the configurability of a PLL is a multi-modulus divider. The resolution of this divider (or prescaler) dictates the resolution of the configurable PLL output frequency. In integrated PLL designs, such a multi-modulus prescaler is usually sourced from a GHz-range voltage-controlled oscillator. Therefore, a fully-integrated PLL ASIC requires the development of a high-speed, high-resolution multi-modulus prescaler. The design challenges associated with developing such a prescaler are compounded when the application requires the device to operate in an extreme environment. In these extreme environments (often extra-terrestrial), wide temperature ranges and radiation effects can adversely affect the operation of electronic systems. Even more problematic is that extreme temperatures and ionizing radiation can cause permanent damage to electronic devices. Typical commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components are not able withstand such an environment, and any electronics operating in these extreme conditions must be designed to accommodate such operation. This dissertation describes the development of a high-speed, high-resolution, multi-modulus prescaler capable of operating in an extreme environment. This prescaler has been developed using current-mode logic (CML) on a 180-nm silicon-germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS process. The prescaler is capable of operating up to at least 5.4 GHz over a division range of 16-48 with a total of 27 configurable moduli. The prescaler is designed to provide excellent ionizing radiation hardness, single-event latch-up (SEL) immunity, and single-event upset (SEU) resistance over a temperature range of −180°C to 125°C

    A Low-Power BFSK/OOK Transmitter for Wireless Sensors

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    In recent years, significant improvements in semiconductor technology have allowed consistent development of wireless chipsets in terms of functionality and form factor. This has opened up a broad range of applications for implantable wireless sensors and telemetry devices in multiple categories, such as military, industrial, and medical uses. The nature of these applications often requires the wireless sensors to be low-weight and energy-efficient to achieve long battery life. Among the various functions of these sensors, the communication block, used to transmit the gathered data, is typically the most power-hungry block. In typical wireless sensor networks, transmission range is below 10 meters and required radiated power is below 1 milliwatt. In such cases, power consumption of the frequency-synthesis circuits prior to the power amplifier of the transmitter becomes significant. Reducing this power consumption is currently the focus of various research endeavors. A popular method of achieving this goal is using a direct-modulation transmitter where the generated carrier is directly modulated with baseband data using simple modulation schemes. Among the different variations of direct-modulation transmitters, transmitters using unlocked digitally-controlled oscillators and transmitters with injection or resonator-locked oscillators are widely investigated because of their simple structure. These transmitters can achieve low-power and stable operation either with the help of recalibration or by sacrificing tuning capability. In contrast, phase-locked-loop-based (PLL) transmitters are less researched. The PLL uses a feedback loop to lock the carrier to a reference frequency with a programmable ratio and thus achieves good frequency stability and convenient tunability. This work focuses on PLL-based transmitters. The initial goal of this work is to reduce the power consumption of the oscillator and frequency divider, the two most power-consuming blocks in a PLL. Novel topologies for these two blocks are proposed which achieve ultra-low-power operation. Along with measured performance, mathematical analysis to derive rule-of-thumb design approaches are presented. Finally, the full transmitter is implemented using these blocks in a 130 nanometer CMOS process and is successfully tested for low-power operation

    Review of Clocked Storage Elements in Digital Circuit Design

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    Storage of digital circuit is "state" or memory. These are called sequential circuits. The most fundamental sequential circuit type that we will ponder is known as the Flip-Flop. It is ponder four distinct assortments of these gadgets and their utilization in registers and register documents, which can be considered as one type of on– CPU memory. The traditional memory, called RAM, is ordinarily not on the CPU chip. Regular Slam and its assortments, including RAM, ROM, SRAM, Measure, and SDRAM. True single-phase clock (TSPC) method of reasoning has found wide use in advanced plan. At first as a quick topology, the TSPC structure in like manner eats up less power and includes less areas than various systems. In flip-flop plan only a single transistor is being clocked by short heartbeat get ready which is known as True Single Phase Clocking (TSPC) flip-flop

    A low power prescaler, phase frequency detector, and charge pump for a 12 ghz frequency synthesizer

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    A low power implementation of a CMOS frequency synthesizer at 12 GHz is an important step to improve the efficiency of a wireless transceiver in this frequency band. Since synthesizers are often employed as reference frequency sources such as local oscillators for up or down-conversion in communications system, their design is especially important for high performance transceiver applications. CMOS PLLs operating at high frequencies consume large amounts of power for proper operation, making power efficiency a top priority in transciever implementation. In response, this thesis presents a low power phase and frequency detector with True Single Phase Clocking by employing the .18μ TSMC process with a 1.8 V supply voltage. A conventional but extremely power efficient nano-watt charge pump is also implemented for additional power savings. Furthermore, a state of the art 16/17 prescaler using Current Mode Logic (CML) D-Flip Flops, CMOS inverters, and transmission gates has been optimized for maximum power savings. The prescaler consists of a 4/5 synchronous core and a feedback loop which modulates the 4/5 core to produce a division ratio of 16/17. Instead of employing power hungry CML, the feedback circuit takes advantage of low power NOR and AND gates realized in Transmission Gate Logic (TGL) to reduce the power consumption. To the best of my knowledge, this technique has never been used in a high frequency prescaler before

    Process and Temperature Compensated Wideband Injection Locked Frequency Dividers and their Application to Low-Power 2.4-GHz Frequency Synthesizers

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    There has been a dramatic increase in wireless awareness among the user community in the past five years. The 2.4-GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band is being used for a diverse range of applications due to the following reasons. It is the only unlicensed band approved worldwide and it offers more bandwidth and supports higher data rates compared to the 915-MHz ISM band. The power consumption of devices utilizing the 2.4-GHz band is much lower compared to the 5.2-GHz ISM band. Protocols like Bluetooth and Zigbee that utilize the 2.4-GHz ISM band are becoming extremely popular. Bluetooth is an economic wireless solution for short range connectivity between PC, cell phones, PDAs, Laptops etc. The Zigbee protocol is a wireless technology that was developed as an open global standard to address the unique needs of low-cost, lowpower, wireless sensor networks. Wireless sensor networks are becoming ubiquitous, especially after the recent terrorist activities. Sensors are employed in strategic locations for real-time environmental monitoring, where they collect and transmit data frequently to a nearby terminal. The devices operating in this band are usually compact and battery powered. To enhance battery life and avoid the cumbersome task of battery replacement, the devices used should consume extremely low power. Also, to meet the growing demands cost and sized has to be kept low which mandates fully monolithic implementation using low cost process. CMOS process is extremely attractive for such applications because of its low cost and the possibility to integrate baseband and high frequency circuits on the same chip. A fully integrated solution is attractive for low power consumption as it avoids the need for power hungry drivers for driving off-chip components. The transceiver is often the most power hungry block in a wireless communication system. The frequency divider (prescaler) and the voltage controlled oscillator in the transmitter’s frequency synthesizer are among the major sources of power consumption. There have been a number of publications in the past few decades on low-power high-performance VCOs. Therefore this work focuses on prescalers. A class of analog frequency dividers called as Injection-Locked Frequency Dividers (ILFD) was introduced in the recent past as low power frequency division. ILFDs can consume an order of magnitude lower power when compared to conventional flip-flop based dividers. However the range of operation frequency also knows as the locking range is limited. ILFDs can be classified as LC based and Ring based. Though LC based are insensitive to process and temperature variation, they cannot be used for the 2.4-GHz ISM band because of the large size of on-chip inductors at these frequencies. This causes a lot of valuable chip area to be wasted. Ring based ILFDs are compact and provide a low power solution but are extremely sensitive to process and temperature variations. Process and temperature variation can cause ring based ILFD to loose lock in the desired operating band. The goal of this work is to make the ring based ILFDs useful for practical applications. Techniques to extend the locking range of the ILFDs are discussed. A novel and simple compensation technique is devised to compensate the ILFD and keep the locking range tight with process and temperature variations. The proposed ILFD is used in a 2.4-GHz frequency synthesizer that is optimized for fractional-N synthesis. Measurement results supporting the theory are provided

    A low phase noise ring oscillator phase-locked loop for wireless applications

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    Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 129).This thesis describes the circuit level design of a 900MHz [Sigma][Detta] ring oscillator based phase-locked loop using 0.35[mu]m technology. Multiple phase noise theories are considered giving insight into low phase-noise voltage controlled oscillator design. The circuit utilizes a fully symmetric differential voltage controlled oscillator with cascode current starved inverters to reduces current noise. A compact multi-modulus prescaler is presented, based on modified true single-phase clock flip-flops with integrated logic. A fully differential charge pump with switched-capacitor common mode feedback is utilized in conjunction with a nonlinear phase-frequency detector for accelerated acquisition time.by Colin Weltin-Wu.M.Eng

    Frequency Synthesis in Wireless and Wireline Systems

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    First, a frequency synthesizer for IEEE 802.15.4 / ZigBee transceiver applications that employs dynamic True Single Phase Clocking (TSPC) circuits in its frequency dividers is presented and through the analysis and measurement results of this synthesizer, the need for low power circuit techniques in frequency dividers is discussed. Next, Differential Cascode Voltage-Switch-Logic (DCVSL) based delay cells are explored for implementing radio-frequency (RF) frequency dividers of low power frequency synthesizers. DCVSL ip- ops offer small input and clock capacitance which makes the power consumption of these circuits and their driving stages, very low. We perform a delay analysis of DCVSL circuits and propose a closed-form delay model that predicts the speed of DCVSL circuits with 8 percent worst case accuracy. The proposed delay model also demonstrates that DCVSL circuits suffer from a large low-to-high propagation delay ( PLH) which limits their speed and results in asymmetrical output waveforms. Our proposed enhanced DCVSL, which we call DCVSL-R, solves this delay bottleneck, reducing PLH and achieving faster operation. We implement two ring-oscillator-based voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs) in 0.13 mu m technology with DCVSL and DCVSL-R delay cells. In measurements, for the same oscillation frequency (2.4GHz) and same phase noise (-113dBc/Hz at 10MHz), DCVSL-R VCO consumes 30 percent less power than the DCVSL VCO. We also use the proposed DCVSL-R circuit to implement the 2.4GHz dual-modulus prescaler of a low power frequency synthesizer in 0.18 mu m technology. In measurements, the synthesizer exhibits -135dBc/Hz phase noise at 10MHz offset and 58 mu m settling time with 8.3mW power consumption, only 1.07mWof which is consumed by the dual modulus prescaler and the buffer that drives it. When compared to other dual modulus prescalers with similar division ratios and operating frequencies in literature, DCVSL-R dual modulus prescaler demonstrates the lowest power consumption. An all digital phase locked loop (ADPLL) that operates for a wide range of frequencies to serve as a multi-protocol compatible PLL for microprocessor and serial link applications, is presented. The proposed ADPLL is truly digital and is implemented in a standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology without any analog/RF or non-scalable components. It addresses the challenges that come along with continuous wide range of operation such as stability and phase frequency detection for a large frequency error range. A proposed multi-bit bidirectional smart shifter serves as the digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) control and tunes the DCO frequency by turning on/off inverter units in a large row/column matrix that constitute the ring oscillator. The smart shifter block is completely digital, consisting of standard cell logic gates, and is capable of tracking the row/column unit availability of the DCO and shifting multiple bits per single update cycle. This enables fast frequency acquisition times without necessitating dual loop fi lter or gear shifting mechanisms. The proposed ADPLL loop architecture does not employ costly, cumbersome DACs or binary to thermometer converters and minimizes loop filter and DCO control complexity. The wide range ADPLL is implemented in 90nm digital CMOS technology and has a 9-bit TDC, the output of which is processed by a 10-bit digital loop filter and a 5-bit smart shifter. In measurements, the synthesizer achieves 2.5GHz-7.3GHz operation while consuming 10mW/GHz power, with an active area of 0.23 mm2

    Modelagem e projeto de um divisor de frequências para utilização no PLL de um transceptor ZigBee

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    Monografia (graduação)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade UnB Gama, Curso de Engenharia Eletrônica, 2015.Existem diversas aplicações de sistemas wireless e de sensoriamento na indústria que apresentam como requisitos baterias com baixo consumo e longa duração, bem como baixa taxa de transferência de dados e maior simplicidade se comparados com outros padrões disponíveis. Neste contexto, o padrão ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4 foi desenvolvido para atender este tipo de mercado que necessita de sistemas confiáveis e de baixo consumo. Este trabalho apresenta o projeto em nível de transistor de um divisor de frequências Inteiro-N a ser utilizado num Phase Locked Loop (PLL). Este PLL está inserido num transceptor ZibBee que opera na faixa de frequência entre 2400 - 2475 MHz e possui 16 canais de operação espaçados por um fator de 5 MHz. Durante todo o trabalho será utilizada a metodologia top-down que apresenta fluxos de projeto bem definidos. A modelagem do divisor terá como principal ferramenta a linguagem de descrição de hardware Verilog-MAS que dá suporte a metodologia top-down. Primeiramente foi realizada a pesquisa bibliográfica referente ao PLL, divisor de frequências e levantamento dos parâmetros iniciais deste divisor. Após isso realizou-se a modelagem do divisor, utilizando o Verilog-AMS, focando na análise comportamental e levantamento das funcionalidades do mesmo, bem como o projeto a nível de transistor de todo o divisor. O divisor utiliza a topologia Pulse Swallow Divider que é composta por um prescaler com dois módulos de divisão (N / N + 1), um swallow counter(S) e o contador principal (P). O projeto dos blocos foi realizado utilizando as topologias True Single Phase Clock (TSPC) e Extended True Single Phase Clock (E-TSPC) na tecnologia TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) 0, 18um. O objetivo geral foi projetar o divisor de frequências para o PLL, desenvolvido com especificações próprias para o protocolo ZigBee. Por fim, este trabalho terá como aplicação a agricultura, mais especificamente o sistema de irrigação onde utiliza-se uma rede de sensores para detectar pontos de baixa umidade, enviar esta informação para a central de processamento por meio de um transceptor ZigBee de baixo consumo, que tem o PLL como um dos principais blocos em sua construção, e tomar as decisões para melhorar a produtividade na lavoura. ______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTThere are many applications of wireless and sensing systems in the present industry that requires battery with low power consumption and long lasting as well as low data transfer rate and greater simplicity when compared with other standards available. The ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4 standard is designed to address this type of market that needs reliable systems and low consumption. This paper presents the transistor level design of a frequency divider to be used in a Phase Locked Loop (PLL). This PLL is housed in a ZibBee transceiver that operates in the frequency range between 2400 – 2475 MHz and has 16 channels spaced by a factor of 5 MHz. The top-down methodology shall be used, because it provides well defined project streams. The divider will be modeled using the hardware description language VerilogAMS which supports top-down methodology. Initially, it was carried out literature concerning the PLL frequency divider and collection of initial parameters of this divider. After that, the divider modeling was held, using Verilog-AMS, focusing on behavioral analysis and survey of the same features, as well as the transistor level design of the divider. The divider has the topology Pulse Swallow Divider which is comprised of a dual modulus prescaler (N / N + 1), a swallow counter (S) and the main counter (P). The design of the blocks was done using topologies True Single Phase Clock (TSPC) and Extended True Single Phase Clock (E-TSPC) at technology TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) 0.18 one. The overall goal was to design a frequency divider for the PLL, developed with particular specifications for the ZigBee protocol. Finally, this work has application as agriculture, more specifically in the irrigation system where a network of sensors is used to detect low humidity points, sending this information to the central processing by means of a low-power ZigBee transceiver, having PLL as one of the main blocks in its construction, and make decisions to improve productivity in agriculture
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