Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, a new 1/4 rate clock linear phase detector (PD) structure for PLL-based clock and data recovery (CDR) circuits will be suggested. The proposed topology offers a more suitable PD for high speed applications compared to the conventional topologies. The effect of duty cycle variation on the operation of CDR has been also studied. Designed in a 0.18μm CMOS technology, the proposed PD consumes 16mA from a 1.8V voltage supply. © 2006 IEEE  

A novel ultra high-throughput detection algorithm with an efficient VLSI architecture for high-order MIMO detectors in the complex constellations is proposed. The main contributions include a new method for the node generation in complex-domain, pipelinable sorters, and a simple combinational circuit instead of the conventional multipliers, which makes the proposed architecture multiplication-free. The proposed design achieves an SNR-independent throughput of 13.3 Gbps at the clock frequency of 556 MHz in a 0.13 μm CMOS technology with a near ML performance. The implemented design consumes 90 pJ per detected bit with the initial latency of 0.3 μs. Also, the synthesis results in a 90 nm CMOS... 

A new family of sampled-data filters in which accuracy is a function of the ratio of the resistors is introduced. It is shown that this structure is suitable for low-voltage high-speed applications. A biquad filter with a quality factor of 10 and a clock frequency of 60MHz consuming only 2mW power is also presented  

This paper introduces a novel scalable pipelined VLSI architecture for a 4×4 64-QAM hard-output multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) detector based on K-best lattice decoders. The key contribution is a means of expanding the intermediate nodes of the search tree on-demand, rather than exhaustively, along with three types of distributed sorters operating in a pipelined structure. The proposed architecture has a fixed critical path independent of the constellation size, on-demand expansion scheme, efficient distributed sorters, and is scalable to higher number of antennas. Fabricated in 0.13 μCMOS, it occupies 0.95 μ mm} 2 core area. Operating at 282 MHz clock frequency, it dissipates 135 mW... 

Limitations in operation of analog switches at very low voltages have caused many problems in design of these types of switched capacitor circuits and data converters. In this paper by modifying a recently proposed clock boosting circuit, we could obtain a new structure with better performance for very low voltage circuits. This method requires simpler digital circuits in comparison with previously reported structures, as well as less number of transistors and smaller chip area. This method can be used for sampling the full swing signals with supply voltages as low as 0.4 volt. © 2008 IEEE  

A compact, low power, clock frequency doubler circuit with no external devices designed and manufactured in a 0.5um CMOS technology. Proposed circuit generates a 4.096MHz output clock frequency from a 2.048MHz input clock while an automatic duty cycle control circuit reduces the sensitivity of the duty cycle of output clock to the duty cycle of input signal or process and temperature we variations. For this purpose, an accurate delayed clock is generated. structure besides MOSFET capacitors offers a impact and low power circuit. The area of the circuit is 0.08mm2 while consumes 380uArms SV power supply and drives 15pF capacitor load. Measured output duty cycle shows a variance of 2.7% from... 

Network on Chip (NoC) is the most common interconnection platform for multiprocessor systems-on-chips (MPSoCs). In order to explore the design space of this platform, we need a high-speed, cycle-accurate, and flexible simulation tool. In this paper, we present AdapNoC, a configurable cycle-accurate FPGA-based NoC simulator, which can be configured via software. A wide range of parameters are configurable in FPGA side of the proposed simulator, and the software side is implemented on an embedded soft-core processor. We transfer some parts of simulator, such as Traffic Generators (TGs) and Traffic Receptors (TRs), to software side without any degradation in simulation speed. Moreover, we... 

A dual mode UHF RFID transponder in 0.18 μm CMOS conforming to the EPC Gen 2 standard is presented. Low voltage design of the analog and digital blocks enables the chip to operate with a 1 V regulated voltage and thus to reduce the power consumption. The novel dual mode architecture enables the chip to work in passive and battery-assisted modes controlled by the reader. A custom Gen 2 based command switches the operation mode of the circuit. By using a special clock calibration method the chip operates from 1.2 to 5 MHz clock frequency. Several low power techniques are employed to reduce the power consumption of the chip which is essential in passive RFID tags. Measurement results show that... 

A low power four bit mixed Successive Approximation Register (SAR)-Flash Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) for Sigma-Delta ADC applications is presented. The ADC uses three comparators in order to reduce the latency of typical SAR ADCs. Three comparators are used for conversion of 2 bits per one clock cycle. One of the Digital to Analog Converters (DACs) is replaced by three resistors which can save power and area. The ADC is simulated by Cadence Spectre using TSMC 0.18um COMS technology. The power consumption at 165MS/s and 1.8V supply voltage is 1.8mW. The SNDR and SFDR for 10MHz input are 19.8dB and 28.4dB, respectively  

The electric field of the modes of semiconductor microring lasers (SMRLs) in the presence of bus waveguide reflections are linear combinations of the clock wise (CW) and the counter clock wise (CCW) electric fields. The mode structures can be controlled by the waveguide reflection coefficients. The power ratio and phase difference of the CW and CCW fields of one mode is proportional to the ratio of the reflection coefficients of the left and right waveguides. It is shown that the degenerate CW and CCW modes in the presence of bus waveguide reflections are split into two modes with different frequencies. Employing these new modes, SMRL can be used as an element to design flip-flops used in... 

In this paper, a new all optical phase-locked loop (OPLL) is proposed and analyzed. The scheme relies on using two optical Kerr shutters to reveal the OPLL's error signal. The set of optical Kerr shutters and the subsequent low-speed photodetectors realize two nonlinear cross-correlations between the local clock pulse stream (called pump in Kerr shutter notations) and the time-shifted replicas of the incoming received data signal (called probe). The outputs of the cross-correlators are subtracted to form the error signal of the OPLL. We characterize the mathematical structure of the proposed OPLL and identify its two intrinsic sources of phase noise, namely, randomness of the received... 

Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) has received attention, because it can achieve the same security level as other asymmetric methods while using a key with smaller length. Although ECC is more efficient compared with other asymmetric methods, the fast computation of ECC is always desirable. In this paper, a fixed-base comb point multiplication method has been used to perform regular point multiplication. In addition, two low-complexity (LC) and low-latency (LL) architectures for the regular point multiplication using fixed-base comb method have been proposed. The point multiplication architectures have been implemented using field-programmable gate array and application-specific integrated... 

This paper presents a hybrid QR decomposition (QRD) design that reduces the number of computations and increases their execution parallelism by using a unique combination of Multi-dimensional Givens rotations, Householder transformations and conventional 2-D Givens rotations. A semi-pipelined semi-iterative architecture is presented for the QRD core, that uses innovative design ideas to develop 2-D, Householder 3-D and 4-D/2-D configurable CORDIC processors, such that they can perform the maximum possible number of vectoring and rotation operations within the given number of cycles, while minimizing gate count and maximizing the resource utilization. Test results for the 0.3 mm 2 QRD chip,... 

In many synchronous digital systems especially those used in mobile applications, the system is exposed to sever shaking that may lead to a failure in the clock generator. In this paper we present an effective method to tolerate the faults on the clock signal that are due to defects in external oscillators. Our technique utilizes no Phase-Lock Loops (PLL), no Delay-Locked Loops (DLL) and no high frequency oscillators because of their drawbacks so that it needs neither more effort to meet Electro-Magnetic Compatibility (EMC) and requirements nor extra hardware to implement DLLs. We have formally evaluated the meta-stability of our technique. This evaluation shows that our technique reliably... 

Aging has become a critical CMOS reliability issue in nanoscales. In general, the aging effect is exhibited as an increase in the delay of the combinational parts and robustness degradation of memory structures. To monitor the aging state of the combinational parts, this paper proposes an aging sensor that is combined with the flip-flops of a chip. The function of this sensor is based on monitoring the stability violation of the critical path output, before the rising edge of the clock signal. The precision of the proposed sensor is about 2.7 × of the most accurate previously presented aging sensors. This is achieved by almost 33% less area overhead compared with state-of-the-art aging... 

A four stage LC-ring oscillator is presented. Eight different phases are generated in which there in 45 degrees phase difference between consecutive outputs and direction of phases is defined. Nmos capacitors in parallel with constant capacitors are used for coupling between stages. The control voltage is applied to Pmos varactors to adjust the oscillation frequency. The advantages of this structure are the rather small inductors size, low power consumption, and tuning curve linearity. The proposed structure is simulated in 0.18um CMOS technology. Power consumption for each stage is 4.8mW from a 1.8B supply. The proposed VCO has a phase noise of -121dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset from the center... 

A gated current-controlled oscillator (GCCO) based topology is used to implement a low-power multi-channel clock and data recovery (CDR) system in a 0.18um digital CMOS technology. A systematic approach is presented to design a reliable and low-power system based on the required specifications. Behavioral simulations are also used to estimate the achievable bit error rate (BER), jitter tolerance (JTOL), and frequency offset tolerance (FTOL) of the proposed CDR. Using a single 1.8V supply voltage, the proposed 20Gbps 8-channel CDR consumes only 70.2mW or 3.51mW/Channel/Gbps while occupies 0.045mm2 silicon area. Copyright 2005 ACM  

This paper presents a quadrature-clock generator based on a novel low-power ring oscillator with a wide frequency tuning range and low temperature variations. The proposed ring oscillator consists of two differential delay cells with a new controllable capacitive load of an MOS transistor. The wide tuning range is achieved due to transistor utilization in different regions and considering its resistance not to narrow down the frequency range. Delay cells are biased with a minimum possible value of a proportion to absolute temperature current to decrease frequency variations to temperature while the power consumption is kept low. The validation of the proposed methods is proved by circuit... 

A low-power comparator is presented. pMOS transistors are used at the input of the preamplifier of the comparator as well as the latch stage. Both stages are controlled by a special local clock generator. At the evaluation phase, the latch is activated with a delay to achieve enough preamplification gain and avoid excess power consumption. Meanwhile, small cross-coupled transistors increase the preamplifier gain and decrease the input common mode of the latch to strongly turn on the pMOS transistors (at the latch input) and reduce the delay. Unlike the conventional comparator, the proposed structure let us set the optimum delay for preamplification and avoid excess power consumption. The... 

This article presents a very low-power clock and data recovery (CDR) circuit with 8 parallel channels achieving an aggregate data rate of 20 Gbps. A structural top-down design methodology has been applied to minimize the power dissipation while satisfying the required specifications for short-haul receivers. Implemented in a 0.18μm digital CMOS technology, total power dissipation is 70.2mW or 3.51mW/Gbps/Ch and each channel occupies 0.045 μm2 silicon area. © 2005 IEEE