Low-Voltage Process-Compensated VCO with On-Chip Process Monitoring and Body-Biasing Circuit Techniques

Ken UENO  Tetsuya HIROSE  Tetsuya ASAI  Yoshihito AMEMIYA 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences  Vol.E92-A  No.12  pp.3079-3081
Publication Date: 2009/12/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: Special Section LETTER (Special Section on VLSI Design and CAD Algorithms)
Category: Device and Circuit Modeling and Analysis
Keyword: 
voltage-controlled oscillator,  process variation,  process compensation,  body bias,  current reference, 

Full Text: PDF

Summary: 
A voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) tolerant to process variations at lower supply voltage was proposed. The circuit consists of an on-chip threshold-voltage-monitoring circuit, a current-source circuit, a body- biasing control circuit, and the delay cells of the VCO. Because variations in low-voltage VCO frequency are mainly determined by that of the current in delay cells, a current-compensation technique was adopted by using an on-chip threshold-voltage-monitoring circuit and body-biasing circuit techniques. Monte Carlo SPICE simulations demonstrated that variations in the oscillation frequency by using the proposed techniques were able to be suppressed about 65% at a 1-V supply voltage, compared to frequencies with and without the techniques.