Title
21.1 A 1.7GHz MDLL-based fractional-N frequency synthesizer with 1.4ps RMS integrated jitter and 3mW power using a 1b TDC
Abstract
The introduction of inductorless frequency synthesizers into standardized wireless systems still requires a high level of innovation in order to achieve the stringent requirements of low noise and low power consumption. Synthesizers based on the so-called multiplying delay-locked loop (MDLL) represent one of the most promising architectures in this direction [1-3]. An MDLL resembles a ring oscillator, in which the signal edge traveling along the delay line is periodically refreshed by a clean edge of the reference clock. In this manner, the phase noise of the ring oscillator is filtered up to half the reference frequency and the total output jitter is reduced significantly. Unfortunately, the concept of MDLL, and in general of injection locking (IL), is inherently limited to integer-N synthesis, which makes it unacceptable in practical RF systems. A first extension of injection locking to coarse fractional-N resolution has been shown in [4], in which however the fractional resolution is bounded to the inverse of the number of ring-oscillator delay stages. This paper introduces a fractional-N MDLL-based frequency synthesizer with a 1b time/digital converter (TDC), which is able to outreach the performance of inductorless fractional-N synthesizers. The prototype synthesizes frequencies between 1.6 and 1.9GHz with 190Hz resolution and achieves RMS integrated jitter of 1.4ps at 3mW power consumption, even in the worst-case of near-integer channel.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1109/ISSCC.2014.6757469
Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers
Keywords
DocType
ISSN
delay lines,delay lock loops,frequency synthesizers,jitter,low-power electronics,phase noise,time-digital conversion,mdll-based fractional-n frequency synthesizer,rms integrated jitter,tdc,delay line,frequency 1.6 ghz to 1.9 ghz,inductorless fractional-n synthesizers,injection locking,integer-n synthesis,low power consumption,multiplying delay-locked loop,power 3 mw,ring oscillator,time-digital converter,low power electronics
Conference
0193-6530
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
10
1.08
3
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
giovanni marucci1494.23
andrea fenaroli2252.24
Giovanni Marzin3785.26
Salvatore Levantino435143.23
Carlo Samori534939.76
Andrea L. Lacaita632042.41