An analytical transient model for a 1.5 V BiCMOS dynamic logiccircuit for low-voltage deep submicrometer BiCMOS VLSI

This paper presents an analytical transient model for the 1.5 V BiCMOS dynamic logic circuit using Gummel-Poon charge control model for deep submicrometer BiCMOS VLSI. Based on the analysis, the switching time of the 1.5 V BiCMOS dynamic circuit is sensitive to the forward transit time with a large load capacitance. With a small load capacitance, its switching time is related to the threshold voltage     

A BiCMOS low-power current mode gate

A controllable BiCMOS low-power current mode logic (LPCML) gate is proposed. The LPCML can be controlled to operate in a high-power mode when its inputs and outputs are in transition. When the gate is idle, it is in a low-power mode and the circuit maintains its output levels with very little tail current. A circuit implementation of the LPCML is also reported with a discussion on its design considerations. A circuit implementation of the LPCML with conventional CML indicates that its delay is greater than that of CML by about 60%. The power consumption of LPCML is proportional to the time it spends in the high-power mode, and, hence, may be significantly lower than that of CML     

A compact low-power BiCMOS log-domain filter

A third-order Chebyshev filter based on the log-domain principle and integrated in a 1-μm BiCMOS process is presented. It has a nominal cutoff frequency of 320 kHz corresponding to a bias current of 1 μA, and can be frequency tuned over almost three decades up to about 10 MHz. It operates with a nominal supply voltage of 1.2 V, maintaining a dynamic range (DR) at 1% THD of 57 dB. For cutoff frequencies in the range of 10 kHz, the supply voltage can be reduced down to 0.9 V. The filter occupies an active area of 0.25 mm² and dissipates 23 μW, corresponding to a power consumption per pole and edge frequency of only 24 pJ. These results demonstrate the potential of log-domain filters for very low-voltage and low-power applications     

Certified timing verification and the transition delay of a logiccircuit

Most research in timing verification has implicitly assumed a single vector floating mode computation of delay which is an approximation of the multivector transition delay. In this paper we examine the transition delay of a circuit and demonstrate that the transition delay of a circuit can differ from the floating delay of a circuit. We then provide a procedure for directly calculating the transition delay of a circuit. The most practical benefit of this procedure is the fact that it not only results in a delay calculation but outputs a vector sequence that may be timing simulated to certify static timing verification     

A high-performance, low-power complementary coupled BiCMOS circuit

Reported is a new complementary technique of full-swing BiCMOS circuit design which, though employs a p-n-p, allows the use of n-p-n-only drivers. The simulated results of this new circuit compare favorably among several representative BiCMOS circuits     

A low-power BiCMOS switched-capacitor filter for audio codecapplications

A fully integrated fourth-order filter embedded in a complete 16-b oversampled D/A converter to be used in an audio stereo codec is presented. The possible noise and distortion sources have been accurately evaluated in the design and their contributions have been properly limited. This allows the reduction of the power consumption while satisfying the application requirements. The filter is realized in 0.7-μm BiCMOS technology with an active area of about 1.3 mm² . A total harmonic distortion (THD) of -75 dB for a full scale input signal and an SNR of 96 dB have been achieved. The power consumption of the filter has been maintained within about 40 mW from a single 5-V supply voltage     

一种高速低功耗BiCMOS脉冲式触发器的通用结构

BiCMOS电路兼具CMOS电路高集成度,低功耗的优点和双极型电路高速大驱动能力的优势,已成为目前国际学术界研究的热点之一。本文提出了一种基于BiCMOS工艺的新型脉冲式触发器的通用结构和设计方法,并设计了两种结构简单的BiCMOS脉冲式D型触发器。应用TSMC 180nm工艺,采用HSPICE模拟表明:所设计的BiCMOS脉冲式D型触发器不仅具有正确的逻辑功能,而且具有高速低功耗大驱动能力的优点,与已有文献提出的BiCMOS D型触发器相比,功耗和PDP均有大幅度降低。     

A low-power high-gain transresistance BiCMOS pulse amplifier forcapacitive detector readout

A low-power, high-gain amplifier for detector readout is discussed. The amplifier is balanced, fully differential in circuit topology, and symmetrical in layout, making it radiation tolerant and relatively insensitive to varying magnetic fields in the large detector. Before irradiation, the circuit has a measured differential gain of 110 mV/4 fC, an average 10/90% rise time t_10/90% of 19 ns, a noise figure of 433⊕93·(C_t)^1.08 electrons, e^-, and a power consumption of 750 μW. To keep the core amplifier stable, a low-power super-low gain-bandwidth (SL-GBW) amplifier with a small area is used and also discussed. The SL-GBW amplified has a transition frequency f_T of 38 kHz (including the gain stage, A), a power consumption of 150 nW, a phase margin (PM) of ≈70°, an area of 300×36 μm², and a minimum current per transistor of 7 nA, which is far above the leakage current after irradiation. The complete circuit was implemented in the radiation hard SOI-SIMOX BiCMOS-PJFET technology of DMILL     

High-speed, low-power BiCMOS comparator using a pMOS variable load

A novel BiCMOS latched comparator for high-speed, low-power applications is proposed. The resistive load of conventional current-steering comparators is replaced by a variable load made by a pMOS transistor that, during the comparison cycle, is successively biased in three different operating regions. This solution provides a lower power consumption than conventional architectures, without sacrificing sampling speed. Post-layout simulation results and measurements performed on the prototypes are presented     

A low-voltage, low-power CMOS delay element

A low-voltage, low-power CMOS delay element is proposed. With a unit CMOS inverter load, a delay from 2.6 ns to 76.3 ms is achieved in 0.8 μm CMOS technology. Based on a CMOS thyristor concept, the delay value of the proposed element can be varied over a wide range by a control current. The inherent advantage of a CMOS thyristor in low voltage domains enables this delay element to work down to the supply voltage of 1 V while the threshold voltage of the nMOS and pMOS transistors are 840 mV and -770 mV, respectively. The designed delay value is less sensitive to supply voltage and temperature variation than RC-based or CMOS inverter-based delay elements. Temperature compensation and jitter performance in a noisy environment are also discussed     

A low-power rail-to-rail input-range linear delay element circuit

Delay elements are one of the key components in many time-domain circuits such as time-based analog-to-digital converters. In this paper, a new rail-to-rail current-starved delay element is proposed which not only presents good linearity for the voltage-delay curve over the input range of ground to supply voltage, but also it consumes a dynamic power only during the transition times without consuming any static power. The proposed delay element is designed and simulated in a 0.13-µm CMOS technology with a supply voltage of 1.2 V. Post-layout simulation results demonstrate that the proposed circuit has a linear voltage-delay transfer function with a voltage-to-time gain of −1.33 ps/mV. Moreover, when samples of a full-scale sin-wave input signal are applied to the proposed circuit with a clock frequency of 100 MHz, the power consumption is 30 µW, and signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) of the output delay times is 30.4 dB, making it suitable for use in a time-based analog-to-digital converter with up to 5-bit resolution.     

An accurate analytical BiCMOS delay expression and its applicationto optimizing high-speed BiCMOS circuits

A scheme for optimizing the overall delay of BiCMOS driver circuits is proposed in this paper. Using this optimization scheme, it is found that the delay is minimized when the maximum collector current of the bipolar transistors is equal to the onset of high current effects. Using this assumption, an accurate BiCMOS delay expression is derived in terms of the bipolar and MOS device parameters. The critical device parameters are then identified and their influence on the circuit speed discussed. An overall circuit delay expression for optimizing BiCMOS buffers is derived and a comparison made with CMOS buffers. It is shown that BiCMOS circuits have a speed advantage of 1.7 or an area advantage of about 5 for 2-μm feature sizes. In order to predict the future performance of BiCMOS circuits, a figure of merit is derived from the delay expression. Using the figure-of-merit expression, it is seen that future BiCMOS circuits can keep the speed advantage over CMOS circuits down to submicrometer dimensions under constant load capacitance assumption     

A closed-form delay expression for digital BiCMOS circuits withhigh-injection effects

A non-iterative formula is derived for calculating the delay time of digital BICMOS circuits with their bipolar transistors operating in high-current regime. Effects such as the base transit-time increase of minority carriers and the decrease of the current gain of the bipolar transistors are all incorporated in the model. This model can be used to investigate the effects of most device parameters such as transistor sizes and external loading on the performance of the circuits without resorting to any iterative procedures. This simplified model compares well with the original model to 10% over a wide range of operating conditions, and is especially accurate for situations where base widening affects the bipolar transistors     

A low-power DCO using inverter interlaced cascaded delay cell

This paper presents a low-power small-area digitally controlled oscillator(DCO) using an inverters interlaced cascaded delay cell(IICDC).It uses a coarse-fine architecture with binary-weighted delay stages for the delay range and resolution.The coarse-tuning stage of the DCO uses IICDC,which is power and area efficient with low phase noise,as compared with conventional delay cells.The ADPLL with a DCO is fabricated in the UMC 180-nm CMOS process with an active area of 0.071 mm2.The output frequency range is 140–600 MHz at the power supply of 1.8 V.The power consumption is 2.34 m W @ a 200 MHz output.     

Analysis and optimization of BiCMOS gate circuits

A comprehensive view of an optimization strategy for BiCMOS gates is described. A simple gate delay model is proposed. BiCMOS gate delay, when optimized, is found to be expressed as A+B√F, where F is fanout and A and B are coefficients. Since the coefficients can be extracted by SPICE simulation, the delay prediction can be precise, while keeping the delay formula simple enough for circuit designers to derive useful expressions. A procedure for optimizing BiCMOS gates is studied. BiCMOS gate delay can be calculated quickly and optimized efficiently just by looking up a design table which is obtained from SPICE simulations. The procedure for making the design table is technology-independent. Once obtained, the design table can be applied to any design with the same device technology. A sizing strategy of cascaded BiCMOS buffers is derived from the simple delay model. In a 0.8 μm, 9 GHz, BiCMOS process, a BiCMOS-BiCMOS cascaded buffer is optimized when the scale-up factor between two consecutive stages is e ^2.3(≈10.0). A BiCMOS-CMOS cascaded buffer becomes the fastest when the scale-up factor, e^1.6(≈5.0), is employed. The optimization procedure and the sizing strategy can be used for several variants of the basic BiCMOS gate, because the delay model is based on basic circuit models for the variants     

A low-power high-performance SiGe BiCMOS 802.11a/b/g transceiver IC for cellular and bluetooth Co-existence applications

This paper describes a high-performance WLAN 802.11a/b/g radio transceiver, optimized for low-power in mobile applications, and for co-existence with cellular and Bluetooth systems in the same terminal. The direct-conversion transceiver architecture is optimized in each mode for low-power operation without compromising the challenging RF performance targets. A key transceiver requirement is a sensitivity of -77 dBm (at the LNA input) in 54 Mb/s OFDM mode while in the presence of a GSM1900 transmitter interferer. The receiver chain achieves an overall noise figure of 2.8/3.2 dB, consuming 168/185 mW at 2.8 V for the 2.4/5GHz bands, respectively. Signal loopback and transmit power detection techniques are used in conjunction with the baseband modem processor to calibrate the transmitter LO leakage and the transceiver I/Q imbalances. Fabricated in a 70 GHz f/sub T/ 0.25-/spl mu/m SiGe BiCMOS technology for system-in-package (SiP) use, the dual-band, tri-mode transceiver occupies only 4.6 mm/sup 2/.     

A BiCMOS front-end system with binary delay line for capacitivedetector read-out

As part of the entire readout chip, a low-power high-gain transresistance amplifier has been developed, followed by a high-speed, low-power small offset comparator and a binary delay line. The amplifier is balanced, fully differential in circuit topology, and symmetrical in layout, making it radiation tolerant and relatively insensitive to varying magnetic fields. Also, the comparator is fully symmetrical with a balanced input stage. Before irradiation (pre-rad) the transresistance amplifier has a measured differential gain of 110 mV/4 fC, an average 10/90% rise time (t_10/90%) of 20 to 50 ns depending on the bias conditions, a noise figure of 433⊕93.(C_t)^1.08 (where the symbol ⊕ stands for √(()²+() ²)) electrons (e^-), and a power consumption of 750 μW. The comparator uses bipolar transistors in the regenerative stage resulting in a small offset, a sensitivity <1.5 mV, and a power consumption of ≈350 μW at 40 MHz. The maximum pre-rad frequency at which the comparator is still functioning correctly is ≈100 MHz. Pre-rad, the binary delay line has a delay of 2.1 μs at 40 MHz and a power consumption of ≈450 μW/channel for a four-channel design. The complete readout channel-amplifier, comparator, and binary delay line-consumes ≈1.5 mW. The entire readout system was implemented in the radiation-hard 0.8-μm SOI-SIMOX BiCMOS-PJFET technology of DMILL     

Noncomplementary BiCMOS logic and CMOS logic for low-voltage,low-power operation-a comparative study

This paper presents results of a comprehensive comparative study of six bipolar complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (BiCMOS) noncomplementary logic design styles and two CMOS logic styles for low-voltage, low-power operation. These logic styles have been compared for switching power consumption and power efficiency (power-delay product). The examination offers two alternative approaches never used in other comparative studies. First, all BiCMOS-based styles are compared to low-power CMOS styles as opposed to a single conventional static CMOS style. Second, a low-power methodology has been used as opposed to performance methodology referred to in the previous logic comparisons. The styles examined are bootstrapped BiCMOS, bootstrapped full-swing BiCMOS, bootstrapped bipolar CMOS, Seng-Rofail's bootstrapped BiCMOS, modified full-swing BiCMOS, dynamic full-swing BiCMOS, double pass-transistor CMOS, and inverter-based CMOS. These design styles have been compared at various power supply voltages (0.9-3 V), with various output load capacitances (0.1-1 pF) at the frequency 50 MHz and temperature 27°C. The results clearly show which logic style is the most beneficial for which specific conditions     

A unified theory for mixed CMOS/BiCMOS buffer optimization

A simple yet realistic gate sizing theory is presented to optimize delay of a cascaded gate buffer. The theory is based on the fact that CMOS/BiCMOS gate delay is linearly dependent on fan-out f, that is the delay can be expressed as Af+B, where A and B are coefficients. The optimum fan-out f/sub OPT/ is shown to be approximated as e+B/1.5A for a gate chain. The theory covers various BiCMOS/CMOS gate types such as NANDs and NORs in a unified framework. The existence of spurious capacitance is shown to increase the size of all transistors compared with the case without the spurious capacitance.<>     

基于低功耗约束的CMOS LNA的优化设计

针对低功耗电路发展的趋势,在传统的共源共栅结构基础上,同时引入实现噪声优化的PCSNIM技术和提高增益的级间匹配技术,通过合理调节晶体管的尺寸实现了低功耗的指标.电路采用TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS工艺进行设计,模拟结果表明,在2.45 GHz工作频率下,输入输出匹配良好,增益为14.274 dB,噪声系数为0.669 dB,1 dB压缩点为-16.1 dBm,IIP3为-4.858 dBm,直流功耗仅2.628 mW.