Thermal-Diffusivity-Based Frequency References in Standard CMOS

Thermal-Diffusivity-Based Frequency References in Standard CMOS

Kashmiri, S.M.

Makinwa, K.A.A. (promotor)

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Electronic Instrumentation/EI

2012-04-11

In recent years, a lot of research has been devoted to the realization of accurate integrated frequency references. A thermal-diffusivity-based (TD) frequency reference provides an alternative method of on-chip frequency generation in standard CMOS technology. A frequency-locked loop locks the output frequency of an oscillator to the accurate phase shift of an electrothermal filter (ETF). This phase shift is a function of the well-defined thermal-diffusivity of silicon, the rate at which heat diffuses through this material, and the ETF's geometry. This thesis investigates the feasibility of TD frequency references. The first 1.6MHz realization in a 0.7?m standard CMOS is accurate to ±0.1% from -55°C to 125°C. By scaling the ETF and using a 0.16?m CMOS, a second reference generates 16MHz at the same level of accuracy. The scaled reference improves on power consumption, area, and jitter performance of the first implementation, demonstrating that TD frequency references strongly benefit from CMOS scaling.

thermal-diffusivity
frequency reference
standard CMOS
digitally-assisted analog
frequency-locked loop
electrothermal filter
band-gap temperature sensor
digitally-controlled oscillator
delta sigma modulator

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:1d2381d6-2fd9-4384-bd61-3f0706d68d7a

2015-04-11

9789461912190

Institutional Repository

doctoral thesis

(c) 2012 Kashmiri, S.M.