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A Low-Power Clock Generator with a Wide Frequency Tuning Range and Low Temperature Variation: Analysis and Design

Department of Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Azadi Avenue, Tehran 11369, Iran

Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Texas at El Paso, 500 West University Avenue, El Paso, Texas 79968, USA

E-mail Address: mshokrekhod@miners.utep.edu

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, and

Mojtaba Atarodi

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8090-109X

Department of Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Azadi Avenue, Tehran 11369, Iran

E-mail Address: atarodi@sharif.edu

Corresponding author.

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https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218126620500127Cited by:0 (Source: Crossref)

Abstract

This paper presents a quadrature-clock generator based on a novel low-power ring oscillator with a wide frequency tuning range and low temperature variations. The proposed ring oscillator consists of two differential delay cells with a new controllable capacitive load of an MOS transistor. The wide tuning range is achieved due to transistor utilization in different regions and considering its resistance not to narrow down the frequency range. Delay cells are biased with a minimum possible value of a proportion to absolute temperature current to decrease frequency variations to temperature while the power consumption is kept low. The validation of the proposed methods is proved by circuit analysis. Post-layout simulation results of the proposed clock generator in 180nm CMOS technology are also presented. It exhibits a wide tuning range of 807 MHz to 2.66 GHz. The phase noise of the output signal is about $- 111$ dBc/Hz at 10MHz offset frequency. Frequency changes less than $113.06 ppm ∕^{\circ} C$ in the temperature range of $- 4 0^{\circ}$ C– $10 0^{\circ}$ C. The clock generator consumes 0.657mW of power. Results show improvement in comparison to the previous works.

This paper was recommended by Regional Editor Piero Malcovati.

Keywords:

References

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