A scalable voltage controlled oscillator for multi-rate high-speed interfaces. (September 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Demartinos, Andreas C.; Tsimpos, Andreas; Vlassis, Spyridon; Souliotis, George; Sgourenas, Savvas
• Is Part Of: Microelectronics journal. Volume 55(2016)
• Page Start: 134
• Page End: 142
• Publication Date: 2016-09
• Subjects: High speed serial interfaces -- VCO -- CMOS ring oscillators -- Delay elements; Microelectronics -- Periodicals; Microélectronique -- Périodiques; Microelectronics; Electronic journals; Journals - contents and abstracts; Periodicals; 621.3805
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mejo.2016.07.003
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0959-8324

Abstract

Abstract: This paper proposes a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) which is based on a pseudo-differential ring oscillator suitable for multi-Gbps serial interfaces. The delay element employed in the ring oscillator topology consists of two CMOS inverters loaded by a simple negative resistance realized with pMOS transistors. The proposed topology is designed and simulated in a 65 nm CMOS process with 1.2 V supply voltage. As a realistic application, the VCO performance is optimized to be compliant with the MIPI Alliance M-PHY standard which is the most updated high-speed serial interface technology. The frequency tuning range covers the three frequency bands of the MPHY standard which are [0.624 and 0.7288] GHz, [1.248 and 1.4576] GHz and [2.496 and 2.9152] GHz and corresponds to high-speed gear 1, 2 and 3, respectively. In each gear an almost constant K VCO is achieved while the current consumption of the whole system is 2.87, 5.19 and 10.06 mA for the gears 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The phase noise is about −94 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz frequency offset for 2.9152 GHz.