• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.87-93
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• 2010

This paper presents a high resolution, wide input range 2-step time-to-digital converter used in digital PLL. TDC is used to compare the DPLL output frequency with reference frequency and should be implemented with high resolution to improve the phase noise of DPLL. The conventional TDC consists of delay line realized inverters, whose resolution is determined by delay time of inverter and transistor size, resulting in limited resolution. In this paper, 2-step TDC with phase-interpolation and Time Amplifier is proposed to meet the high resolution and wide input range by implement the delay time less than an inverter delay. The gain of Time Amplifier is improved by using the delay time difference between two inverters. It is implemented in $0.13{\mu}m$ CMOS process and the die area is $800{\mu}m{\times}850{\mu}m$ Current consumption is 12 mA at the supply voltage of 1.2 V. The resolution and input range of the proposed TDC are 0.357 ps and 200 ps, respectively.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.34-41
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• 2011

This paper presents a wide tuning range, fine-resolution DCO (Digitally Controlled Oscillator) with an active inductor. In order to control the frequency of the DCO, the transconductance of the active inductor is tuned digitally. In addition, the DCO gain needs to be calibrated digitally to compensate for gain variations. To cover the wide tuning range, an automatic three-step coarse tuning scheme is proposed. The DCO total frequency tuning range is 1.4 GHz (2.1 GHz to 3.5 GHz), it is 58 % at 2.4 GHz. An effective frequency resolution is 0.14 kHz/LSB. The proposed DCO is implemented in 0.13 ${\mu}m$ CMOS process. The total power consumption is 6.6 mW from a 1.2 V supply voltage. The phase noise of the DCO output at 2.4 GHz is -120.67 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.10
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• pp.80-86
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• 2014

A low-noise readout circuit is studied for 2-D capacitive microbolometer focal plane arrays (FPAs). In spite of the merits of the integration method, a simple and effective pixelwise readout circuit without integration is used for input circuit because of a small pixel size and narrow noise bandwidth. To reduce the power consumption and the kT/C noise, which is the dominant noise of the capacitive microbolometer FPAs with small capacitance, a new correlated double sampling (CDS) is used for columnwise circuit. The proposed circuit has been designed using a $0.35-{\mu}m$ 2-poly 4-metal CMOS process for a microbolometer array with a pixel size of $50{\mu}m{\times}50{\mu}m$. The proposed circuit effectively reduces the kT/C noise and the other low-frequency noise of microbolometer, and the noise characteristics of the fabricated chip have been verified by measurements. The rms noise voltage of the proposed circuit is reduced from 30 % to 55 % compared to that of the simple readout input circuit, and the noise equivalent temperature difference (NETD) of the proposed circuit is very low value of 21.5 mK.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.10
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• pp.57-63
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• 2014

This paper proposes an architecture of $3^{rd}$ order SDM(Sigma-Delta Modulator) with delayed feed-forward path in order to reduce the power consumption and area. The proposed SDM improve the architecture of conventional $3^{rd}$ order SDM which consists of two integrators. The proposed architecture can increase the coefficient values of first stage doubly by inserting the delayed feed-forward path. Accordingly, compared with the conventional architecture, the capacitor value($C_I$) of first integrator is reduced by half. Thus, because the load capacitance of first integrator became the half of original value, the output current of first op-amp is reduced as 51% and the capacitance area of first integrator is reduced as 48%. Therefore, the proposed method can optimize the power and the area. The proposed architecture in this paper is simulated under conditions which are supply voltage of 1.8V, input signal 1Vpp/1KHz, signal bandwidth of 24KHz and sampling frequency of 2.8224MHz in the 0.18um CMOS process. The simulation results are SNR(Signal to Noise Ratio) of 88.9dB and ENOB(Effective Number of Bits) of 14-bits. The total power consumption of the proposed SDM is $180{\mu}W$.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.41 no.12
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• pp.59-65
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• 2004

A stable reference voltage generator is necessary to the infrared image signal readout circuit(ROIC) to improve noise characteristics of signal originated from infrared devices, that is, to gain good images. In this paper, bandgap circuit operating at cryogenic temperature of 77K for Infrared image ROIC(readout integrated circuit) was first made. It demonstrates practical use possibility through taking measurements and estimations. Bandgap circuit is a representative voltage reference circuit. Most of bandgap reference circuits which are presented so far operate at room temperature, and their characteristic are not suitable for infrared image ROIC operating at liquid nitrogen temperature, 77K. To design bandgap circuit operating at cryogenic temperature, suitable circuit is selected and the parameter characteristics of used devices as temperature change are seen by a theoretical study and fitted at liquid temperature with considering such characteristics. This circuit has been fabricated in the Hynix 0.6um standard CMOS process, and the output voltage measured shows that the stability is 1.042±0.0015V over the temperature range of 60K to 110K and is better than bandgap circuits operated at room temperature.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.42 no.2 s.332
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• pp.23-30
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• 2005

This paper describes a DLL(delay locked loop)-based multi-clock generator having the lower active stand-by power as well as a fast relocking after re-activating the DLL. for low power and high speed VLSI chip. It enables a frequency multiplication using frequency multiplier scheme and produces output clocks with 50:50 duty-ratio regardless of the duty-ratio of system clock. Also, digital control scheme using DAC enables a fast relocking operation after exiting a standby-mode of the clock system which was obtained by storing analog locking information as digital codes in a register block. Also, for a clock multiplication, it has a feed-forward duty correction scheme using multiphase and phase mixing corrects a duty-error of system clock without requiring additional time. In this paper, the proposed DLL-based multi-clock generator can provides a synchronous clock to an external clock for I/O data communications and multiple clocks of slow and high speed operations for various IPs. The proposed DLL-based multi-clock generator was designed by the area of $1796{\mu}m\times654{\mu}m$ using $0.35-{\mu}m$ CMOS process and has $75MHz\~550MHz$ lock-range and maximum multiplication frequency of 800 MHz below 20psec static skew at 2.3v supply voltage.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.42 no.8 s.338
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• pp.35-42
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• 2005

This paper describes novel flip-flops with improved robustness and reduced power consumption. Variable sampling window flip-flop (VSWFF) adjusts the width of the sampling window according to input data, providing robust data latching as well as shorter hold time. The flip-flop also reduces power consumption for higher input switching activities as compared to the conventional low-power flip-flop. Clock swing-reduced variable sampling window flip-flop (CSR-VSWFF) reduces clock power consumption by allowing the use of a small swing clock. Unlike conventional reduced clock swing flip-flops, it requires no additional voltage higher than the supply voltage, eliminating design overhead related to the generation and distribution of this voltage. Simulation results indicate that the proposed flip-flops provide uniform latency for narrower sampling window and improved power-delay product as compared to conventional flip-flops. To evaluate the performance of the proposed flip-flops, test structures were designed and implemented in a $0.3\mu m$ CMOS process technology. Experimental result indicates that VSWFF yields power reduction for the maximum input switching activity, and a synchronous counter designed with CSR-VSWFF improves performance in terms of power consumption with no use of extra voltage higher than the supply voltage.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.72-80
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• 2010

The 1Gbps clock and data recovery (CDR) circuit using the proposed multi-point phase detector (PD) is presented. The proposed phase detector generates up/down signals comparing 3-point that is data transition point and clock rising/falling edge. The conventional PD uses the pulse width modulation (PWM) that controls the voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) using the width of a pulse period's multiple. However, the proposed PD uses the pulse number modulation (PNM) that regulates the VCO with the number of half clock cycle pulse. Therefore the proposed PD can controls VCO preciously and reduces the jitter. The CDR circuit is tested using 1Gbps $2^{31}-1$ pseudo random bit sequence (PRBS) input data. The designed CDR circuit shows that is capable of recovering clock and data at rates of 1Gbps. The recovered clock jitter is 7.36ps at 1GHz and the total power consumption is about 12mW. The proposed circuit is implemented using a 0.18um CMOS process under 1.8V supply.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.105-113
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• 2013

In this paper a micro solar energy harvesting system with MPPT(Maximum Power Point Tracking) control using a miniature PV(photovoltaic) cell of which the output is less than 0.5V is proposed. The MPPT control is implemented using linear relationship between the open-circuit voltage of a PV cell and its MPP(Maximum Power Point) voltage such that a pilot PV cell can track the MPP of the main PV cell in real time. The proposed circuit is designed in 0.18um CMOS process. The designed chip area is $900um{\times}1370um$ including a load charge pump and pads. Measured results show that the designed system can track the MPP voltage changes with variations of light intensity. The designed circuit with MPPT control delivers MPP voltages to load even though the load is heavy such that it can supply more power when the MPPT control is applied. The proposed circuit does not require any precharged battery resulting in more suitability for miniaturized self-powered systems compared to the existing works.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.129-136
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• 2007

In this paper, a simple but effective Dataline Redundancy Circuit (DRC) is proposed for a dual-port 1T-SRAM embedded in Display ICs. The DRC designed in the dual-port $320{\times}120{\times}18$-bit 1T-SRAM is verified in a 0.18-um CMOS 1T-SRAM process. In the DRC, because its control logic circuit can be implemented by a simple Shift Logic Circuit (SLC) with only an inverter and a NAND that is much simpler than the conventional, it can be placed in a pitch as narrow as a bit line pair. Moreover, an improved version of the SLC is also proposed to reduce its worst-case delay from 12.3ns to 5.9ns by 52%. By doing so, the timing overhead of the DRC can be hidden under the row cycle time because switching of the datalines can be done between the times of the word line setup and the sense amplifier setup. The area overhead of the DRC is estimated about 7.6% in this paper.