Hang-Geun Jeong

5-GHz CMOS LC VCOs with wide tuning ranges

A 4.8-GHz LC voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) optimized for maximum tuning range was designed and fabricated using 0.25-/spl mu/m 1P5M CMOS process. The optimized design used an inverse proportionality between the two parasitic capacitances of the inductor and the MOS transistors for minimizing the parasitic capacitance at the oscillation node. The fabricated LC VCO has a wide tuning range of 20.3% from 4.32 GHz to 5.3 GHz with a power dissipation of 7.3 mW. This tuning range performance is comparable to, or better than, those of the reported CMOS LC VCOs in 5-GHz band. The measured phase noise is -82 dBc/Hz and -114.6 dBc/Hz at 100 KHz and 1-MHz offset, respectively.

An Optimized Stacked Driver for Synchronous Buck Converter

Half-rail stacked drivers are used to reduce power consumption of the drivers for synchronous buck converters. In this paper, the stacked driver is optimized by matching the average charging and discharging currents used by high-side and low-side drivers. By matching the two currents, the average intermediate bias voltage can remain constant without the aid of the voltage regulator as long as the voltage ripple stays within the window defined by the hysteresis of the regulator. Thus the optimized driver in this paper can minimize the power consumption in the regulator. The current matching requirement yields the value for the intermediate bias voltage, which deviates from the half-rail voltage. Furthermore the required capacitance is also reduced in this design due to decreased charging current, which results in significantly reduced die area. The detailed analysis and design of the stacked driver is verified through simulations done using 5V MOSFET parameters of a typical 0.35- m CMOS process. The difference in power loss between the conventional half-rail driver and the proposed driver is less than 1%. But the conventional half-rail driver has excess charge stored in the capacitor, which will be dissipated in the regulator unless reused by an external circuit. Due to the reduction in the required capacitance, the estimated saving in chip area is approximately 18.5% compared to the half-rail driver. Index Terms—Synchronous, stacked, driver, buck, converter, low voltage