A LOW POWER TIME-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER FOR ALL-DIGITAL PHASE-LOCKED LOOP

Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) is a key block used as the phase/frequency detector in an All-Digital Phase-Locked Loop (ADPLL). Usually, it occupies a large proportion of ADPLL's total power consumption up to about 30% to 40%. In this paper, the detailed power consumption of different components in the TDC is analyzed. A Power Management Block (PMB) is presented for the TDC to reduce its power consumption. A 24-bits TDC core with the proposed PMB is implemented in HJTC 0.18 μm CMOS technology. Simulation results show that up to 84% power reduction is achieved using our proposed technique.

A 0.8–4.2 GHz monolithic all-digital PLL based frequency synthesizer for wireless communications

A 0.8–4.2 GHz monolithic all-digital PLL based frequency synthesizer for wireless communications is successfully realized by the 130 nm CMOS process. A series of novel methods are proposed in this paper.Two band DCOs with high frequency resolution are utilized to cover the frequency band of interest, which is as wide as 2.5 to 5 GHz. An overflow counter is proposed to prevent the ＂pulse-swallowing＂ phenomenon so as to significantly reduce the locking time. A NTW-clamp digital module is also proposed to prevent the overflow of the loop control word. A modified programmable divider is presented to prevent the failure operation at the boundary.The measurement results show that the output frequency range of this frequency synthesizer is 0.8–4.2 GHz. The locking time achieves a reduction of 84% at 2.68 GHz. The best in-band and out-band phase noise performances have reached –100 d Bc/Hz, and –125 d Bc/Hz respectively. The lowest reference spur is –58 d Bc.

A time-domain digitally controlled oscillator composed of a free running ring oscillator and flying-adder

A time-domain digitally controlled oscillator （DCO） is proposed. The DCO is composed of a free-running ring oscillator （FRO） and a two lap-selectors integrated flying-adder （FA）. With a coiled cell array which allows uniform loading capacitances of the delay cells, the FRO produces 32 outputs with consistent tap spacing for the FA as reference clocks. The FA uses the outputs from the FRO to generate the output of the DCO according to the control number, resulting in a linear dependence of the output period, instead of the frequency on the digital controlling word input. Thus the proposed DCO ensures a good conversion linearity in a time-domain, and is suitable for time-domain all-digital phase locked loop applications. The DCO was implemented in a standard 0.13μm digital logic CMOS process. The measurement results show that the DCO has a linear and monotonic tuning curve with gain variation of less than 10%, and a very low root mean square period jitter of 9.3 ps in the output clocks. The DCO works well at supply voltages ranging from 0.6 to 1.2 V, and consumes 4 mW of power with 500 MHz frequency output at 1.2 V supply voltage.