A low-voltage controller-based all-digital phase-locked loop (ADPLL) utilized in the medical implant communication service (MICS) frequency band was designed in this study. In the proposed design, controller-based loop topology is used to control the phase and frequency to ensure the reliable handling of the ADPLL output signal. A digitally-controlled oscillator with a delta-sigma modulator was employed to achieve high frequency resolution. The phase error was reduced by a phase selector with a 64-phase signal from the phase interpolator. Fabricated using a 130-nm CMOS process, the ADPLL has an active area of 0.64 mm2, consumes 840 µW from a 0.7-V supply voltage, and has a settling time of 80 µs. The phase noise was measured to be -114 dBc/Hz at an offset frequency of 200 kHz.

This paper presents an ADPLL using a hierarchical TDC composed of a 4fLO DCO followed by a divide-by-4 circuit and three stages of known phase interpolators. We derived simple design requirements for ensuring precision of the phase interpolator. The proposed architecture provides immunity to PVT and local variations, which allows calibration-free operation, as well as sub-inverter delay resolution contributing to good in-band phase noise performance. Also the hierarchical TDC makes it possible to employ a selective activation scheme for power saving. Measured performances demonstrate the above advantages and the in-band phase noise reaches -104 dBc/Hz. It is fabricated in a 65 nm CMOS process and the active area is 0.18 mm2.

We propose a new Clock and Data Recovery (CDR) circuit for burst-mode applications. It can recover clock signals after two data transitions and endure long sequence of consecutive identical digits. Two Digital Phase Aligners (DPAs), triggered by rising or falling edges of input data, recover clock signals, which are then combined by a phase interpolator. This configuration reduces the RMS jitters of the recovered clock by 30% and doubles the maximum run length compared to a previously reported DPA CDR. A prototype chip is demonstrated with 0.18-µm CMOS technology. Measurement results show that the chip operates without any bit error for 1.25-Gb/s 231-1 PRBS with 200-ppm frequency offset and recovers clock and data after two clock cycles.

A new 1.25-Gb/s digitally-controlled dual-loop clock and data recovery circuit is realized. To overcome jitter problems caused by the phase resolution limit, the CDR has two phase generation stages: coarse generation by a phase interpolator and fine generation by a variable delay buffer. The performance of the proposed CDR was verified by behavioral and transistor-level simulations. A prototype CDR chip fabricated with 0.18 µm CMOS process shows error-free operation for 400 ppm frequency offset. The chip occupies 165255 µm2 and consumes 17.8 mW.

A Spread Spectrum Clock Generator (SSCG) using Digital Tracking scheme (DT-SSCG) is described. Using digital tracking control outside a PLL, DT-SSCG can realize stable modulation characteristic independent of the PLL constants. Moreover, DT-SSCG can apply to various modulation profiles easily by brief change of the digital tracking parameters. A test chip has realized the fitting of 5000 ppm downspread with 6.02 dB and 8.02 dB spectrum peak reduction for triangle and Non-Linear modulation.