High-Performance Phase-Locked Loops for Quantum Computing Applications

Quantum computers have gained widespread interest from both industry and academia in the last decade as they are very promising for solving problems intractable by classical computers. However, there is a limited number of qubits in current quantum processors, which impedes the practical applications of a quantum computer. To increase the number...

A design of ultra-low phase noise CMOS oscillator based on series-resonance

The current trend in the state-of-the-art oscillators achieves low phase noise performance. Such stringent performance is demanded in modern Communication Systems. This thesis proposes the design of a CMOS oscillator achieving the ultra-low phase noise. This design is based on TSMC 40 nm technology, the supply voltage is 1.1 V, and the...

A VCO-based ADC for MEMS microphones

MEMS microphones offer a significant scope to improve miniaturization, integration and cost of acoustic systems, poised to be the preferred microphone option for consumer electronics and medical advancements. A MEMS microphone needs a readout interface to convert the microphone’s output to a digital code for further processing, while its poor...

A Compact 10-MHz RC Frequency Reference With a Versatile Temperature Compensation Scheme

This article presents the design and implementation of a compact CMOS RC frequency reference. It consists of a frequency-locked loop (FLL) that locks the period of a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) to the time an RC network takes to charge to a reference voltage. Conventionally, an RC time constant with a near-zero temperature coefficient...

Ultra-Low Power On-Chip Oscillator: A 0.9-V 1.039-MHz 20.51-fJ/cycle oscillator in 28-nm CMOS with rail-to-rail output swing

A Low-Jitter and Low-Spur Charge-Sampling PLL

This article presents a low-jitter and low-spur charge-sampling phase-locked loop (CSPLL). A charge-domain sub-sampling phase detector is introduced to achieve a high phase-detection gain and to reduce the PLL in-band phase noise. Even without employing any power-hungry isolation buffers, the proposed phase detector dramatically suppresses...

A Current Re-Use Quadrature RF Receiver Front-End for Low Power Applications: Blixator Circuit

This article presents the theory and implementation of a quadrature and differential RF front-end receiver. Combining balun, low-noise amplifier (LNA), mixer, and oscillator in a single stage, the proposed circuit, named the Blixator, is well suited for low-power applications. The baseband's transimpedance amplifier (TIA) also shares part of...

A 3-by-3 400-MHz LC microsensor array for wireless capacitive biosensing

Biosensing has been developed rapidly for a number of biomedical applications, including neural monitoring, protein detection, bacteria detection and blood glucose monitoring. Among the branches of bio-sensing, capacitive sensing is a promising technique and utilized widely, since it is rapid, simple, label free and inexpensive. Compared with...

A Switched-Capacitor DC-DC Converter Powering an LC Oscillator to Achieve 85% System Peak Power Efficiency and -65 dBc Spurious Tones

In this paper, we propose a new scheme to directly power a 4.9-5.6GHz LC oscillator from a recursive switched-capacitor DC-DC converter. A finite-state machine is integrated to automatically adjust the conversion ratio and switching frequency of the converter such that its DC output voltage is within ±5% of the desired 1V across input voltage...

A Supply Pushing Reduction Technique for LC Oscillators Based on Ripple Replication and Cancellation

In this paper, we propose a method to suppress supply pushing of an LC oscillator such that it may directly operate from a switched-mode dc-dc converter generating fairly large ripples. A ripple replication block (RRB) generates an amplified ripple replica at the gate terminal of the tail current source to stabilize the oscillator's tail...

A 6800-μ m² Resistor-Based Temperature Sensor with ±0.35 °c (3σ) Inaccuracy in 180-nm CMOS

This paper describes a compact resistor-based temperature sensor that has been realized in a 180-nm CMOS process. It occupies only 6800 μ m², thanks to the use of a highly digital voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO)-based phase-domain sigma-delta modulator, whose loop filter consists of a compact digital counter. Despite its small...

Compact Thermal-Diffusivity-Based Temperature Sensors in 40-nm CMOS for SoC Thermal Monitoring

An array of temperature sensors based on the thermal diffusivity (TD) of bulk silicon has been realized in a standard 40-nm CMOS process. In each TD sensor, a highly digital voltage-controlled oscillator-based Σ Δ ADC digitizes the temperature-dependent phase shift of an electrothermal filter (ETF). A phase calibration scheme is used to...

A 24GHz Radar Receiver in CMOS

This thesis investigates the system design and circuit implementation of a 24GHz-band short-range radar receiver in CMOS technology. The propagation and penetration properties of EM wave offer the possibility of non-contact based remote sensing and through-the-wall imaging of distance stationary or moving objects. The feasibility of realizing...

60GHz Quadrature Voltage-Controlled Oscillator for Radar Application

A voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) is an integral part of a phase lock loop (PLL) which by itself is the core of the frequency reference in a radar system. The generation of the in-phase and quadratue signals is crucial for many radar applications. A 60GHz quadrature voltage controlled oscillator (QVCO) is presented in this thesis. The design...

A 56–65 GHz Injection-Locked Frequency Tripler With Quadrature Outputs in 90-nm CMOS