Search

Energy harvesting techniques provide solutions for powering battery-free circuits or even for charging storage elements such as batteries or super capacitors. In this paper a self-starting switched-capacitor approach based on three-stage charge pump that is appropriate to thermoelectric and photo-voltaic energy harvesting, is carried out in a 28 nm ultra-thin buried oxide (UTBB) fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) CMOS technology. By taking advantage of the FD-SOI substrate characteristics, the forward-body-biasing (FBB) technique is applied in order to improve switch conductances. In addition, a sizing exploration of standard N-type and flipped-well P-type devices operating as switches is advanced, in order to provide optimum balance between their conductances. Extensive simulation results validate the proper operation of the charge pump at a minimum input voltage of 150 mV, and show a maximum efficiency peak of 63.3% at an input voltage of 350 mV and load a current of 500 nA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel T-type multilevel inverter (MLI) based on the switched-capacitor technique. The proposed inverter not only achieves that the maximum voltage stress of the switches is less than the input voltage but also has a voltage boost capability, which makes it suitable in high voltage applications. It is worth mentioning that the proposed inverter features two topology extension schemes which help it achieve a higher output level and voltage gain. With the merit of low voltage stress and reduced power devices, a seven-level inverter can be achieved using only two capacitors. Moreover, capacitor voltage self-balancing capability can simplify the complexity of the circuit and control. The topology, operating principle, modulation strategy and analysis of the capacitor of the inverter are presented. The superiorities of the proposed inverter are investigated by comparing with recently proposed hybrid MLIs and switched-capacitor MLIs. Finally, a seven-level prototype is constructed to validate the correctness of the theoretical analysis and the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed inverter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a low-profile and autonomous piezoelectric energy harvesting system consisting of an extraction rectifier and a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) circuit for powering portable electronics. Synchronized switch harvesting on capacitor-inductor (SSHCI) technique with its unique two-step voltage flipping process is utilized to downsize the ponderous external inductor and extend application areas of such harvesting systems. SSHCI implementation with small flipping inductor-capacitor combination enhances voltage flipping efficiency and accordingly attains power extraction improvements over conventional synchronized switch harvesting on inductor (SSHI) circuits utilizing bulky external components. A novel MPPT system provides robustness of operation against changing load and excitation conditions. Innovation in MPPT comes from the refresh unit, which continually monitors excitation conditions of piezoelectric harvester to detect any change in optimum storage voltage. Compared with conventional circuits, optimal flipping detection inspired from active diode structures eliminates the need for external adjustment, delivering autonomy to SSHCI. Inductor sharing between SSHCI and MPPT reduces the number of external components. The circuit is fabricated in 180 nm CMOS technology with 1.23 mm2 active area, and is tested with custom MEMS piezoelectric harvester at its resonance frequency of 415 Hz. It is capable of extracting 5.44x more power compared to ideal FBR, while using $100~\mu $ H inductor. Due to reduction of losses through low power design techniques, measured power conversion efficiency of 83% is achieved at 3.2 V piezoelectric open circuit voltage amplitude. Boosting of power generation capacity in a low profile is a significant contribution of the design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents fully integrated switched-capacitor boost-buck power converters with conversion ratios 5, 7, and 1/5. Such converters operate over a voltage range extended beyond the device ratings due to a low-voltage-stress configuration, accumulation-mode NMOS capacitors, and a circuit technique for switch bootstrapping. After modeling the simple and the symmetrical ladder converters, we determined methods for assessing the device working voltages and for optimizing the sizes of capacitors and switches. The key performance parameters were compared and the losses due to non-linear parasitic capacitances were calculated. The characterization of the prototypes in a 1.8–3.3-V, 0.18- $\mu \text{m}$ CMOS process demonstrated a 15 V range, a 5.4 mW/mm2 output power density, and good correlation between measured and predicted results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a low-power and area efficient 10-bit SAR ADC with higher side-reset-and-set (HSRS) switching scheme and hybrid capacitive-MOS (CAP-MOS) DAC. The HSRS switching scheme consumes zero switching energy for the two most-significant bits and skips unnecessary switching without using any auxiliary circuit. It is further verified in this paper that the HSRS switching scheme shows lower nonlinearity compared with the conventional CDAC structure with the same unit capacitor size and matching condition. This additional advantage permits using DAC topologies with lower total capacitance under given linearity requirement. A hybrid CAP-MOS DAC is adopted to reduce the total capacitance of the DAC, which consumes lower static current and chip area than the conventional hybrid capacitive-resistive DAC under the same settling requirement. The prototype 10-bit SAR ADC is implemented in a 0.18- $\mu \text{m}$ CMOS technology, showing an SNDR/SFDR of 56.43 dB/71 dB at 90-kHz input, under a 0.6-V power supply, while consuming $1.01~\mu \text{W}$ at 200 kS/s for a figure of merit of 9.32 fJ/conv.-step. The ADC occupies only a small active area of 0.0675 mm2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slewing in switched capacitor (SC) circuits reduces the available time for linear settling, and hence increases the nonlinear settling error. This transient demand in current can be supplied by making the bias currents larger in the operational transconductance amplifier (OTA). However, this increases the static power consumption significantly. In this paper a slewing mitigation technique is presented where just the right amount of charge is provided at the switching instant to the SC circuit so that OTA does not need to provide high peak current. This may eliminate slewing altogether, and allows using OTAs with less static current for the same settling accuracy. The operation of the proposed technique is illustrated by incorporating it in a second-order delta-sigma modulator (DSM). The modulator was designed and simulated in a 65nm CMOS process. Post-layout extracted simulations with optimized design show more than 12 dB improvement in signal to noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) for the same static power. Alternatively, compared to a DSM without such technique, the same performance can be achieved with 30% less power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a 12-bit successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that uses a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) configurable window switching technique. By reusing the capacitors in the DAC, the proposed window switching scheme yields window boundaries to determine whether the input is located within the window, and thus avoid unnecessary capacitor switching. The proposed window SAR ADC improves the conversion efficiency and ADC linearity. A qualitative analysis of prior window switching schemes is presented to elaborate for various applications. A low-input capacitance of 1 pF was adopted to relax the input and reference buffers. A prototype ADC was implemented in 180-nm CMOS occupying an active area of 0.1 mm2. At 20 MS/s, it consumes a total power of 1.22 mW from a 1.5-V supply. The measured peak signal-to-noise and distortion ratio and spurious-free dynamic range were 61.7 and 79 dB, respectively. At the Nyquist rate, the measured effective number of bits (ENOB) was 9.53, equivalent to a figure-of-merit (FOM) of 83 fJ/conversion-step. In low-power mode (100 kS/s), it consumed a total power of $1.5~\mu \text{W}$ from a 0.7-V supply. At the Nyquist rate, the measured ENOB was 9.82, equivalent to a FOM of 16.6 fJ/conversion step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a low-power and area efficient 10-bit successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital (ADC) with a hybrid capacitive-MOS consisting of a 7-bit MSB capacitive DAC (CDAC) and a 3-bit LSB MOS DAC (MDAC), which consumes less power and much smaller chip area than a pure CDAC. Instead of using a string of eight MOS transistors to control one unit capacitor, the 3-bit LSB MDAC is realized by a MOS string with four native MOS transistors to control two unit capacitors, which allows higher voltage drop and more reliable operation for each unit MOS. The overall energy consumption of the proposed CAP-MOS DAC is reduced by 56.2% compared to a Vcm-based 10-bit pure CDAC with the same unit capacitance. Under the sampling rate of 200 kS/s, the prototype 10-bit SAR ADC implemented in a 0.18- ${\mu }\text{m}$ CMOS technology achieves a signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio / spurious-free dynamic range of 56.91 /68.56 dB at 99-kHz input under a 0.6-V power-supply, while consumes $1.76~{\mu }\text{W}$ at 200 kS/s for a figure of merit of 15.38 fJ/step. The peak DNL and INL are +0.27/−0.21 LSB and +0.43/−0.45 LSB, respectively. The ADC occupies a small active area of 0.097 mm2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the design of integrated boost and buck switched-capacitor power converters with high efficiency and fast start-up time. An analysis method is determined to evaluate the key performance parameters of integrated power converters, and techniques are proposed to improve the energy conversion efficiency and the dynamic response. Boost and buck structures are modeled and compared in static and transient conditions, including the losses due to parasitic elements. A switch bootstrapping technique prevents short-circuit losses, improves driving capability and start-up time, and enhances the overall efficiency. Moreover, the application of a charge-reuse technique reduces the dynamic power losses of the integrated structures. Prototypes of the integrated power converters were fabricated in a 180-nm CMOS process. Measurement results based on the proposed techniques are presented, demonstrating the improvements in steady-state and transient characteristics with a good correlation between measured and predicted results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an area- and power-efficient dual-output switched capacitor (DOSC) dc–dc buck converter for wearable biomedical devices. The DOSC converter has an input voltage range between 1.05 and 1.4 V and generates two simultaneous regulated output voltages of 1 and 0.55 V. The DOSC consists of two main blocks: a switched capacitor regulator and an adaptive time multiplexing (ATM) controller. The switched capacitor regulator generates a single regulated voltage using pulse frequency modulation based on a predetermined reference voltage. In addition, the ATM controller generates two simultaneous output voltages and eliminates the reverse current using pulse width modulation during the switching between the output voltages. Addressing the reverse current problem is important to reduce the output voltage droop and improve the performance. The proposed converter supports load currents of 10– $350~\mu \text{A}$ and 1– $10~\mu \text{A}$ at load voltages of 1 and 0.55 V, respectively. The DOSC circuit is fabricated in 65-nm CMOS, and it occupies an active area of 0.27 mm2. Measured results show that a peak efficiency of 78% is achieved at a load power of $300~\mu \text{W}$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systematic method to analyze $N$ -path mixers and filters consisting of periodically switched $RC$ -networks of arbitrary order. It is assumed that each capacitor periodically exchanges charge with the rest of the network during the on-phase of the switching clock, then samples its charge, and holds it perfectly until the next on-phase. This assumption allows for using the adjoint network for simplified analysis of the harmonic transfer functions that describe the signal transfer and folding. Moreover, harmonic transfer cancellations due to the $N$ -path implementation with $N$ equal capacitors switched by $N$ non-overlapping clocks are systematically analyzed. The method is applied to a recently published $N$ -path filter-mixer combination and verified by simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient self-powered synchronous electric charge extraction CMOS interface circuit dedicated to piezoelectric harvesters is proposed in this paper. Self-powered peak detection (PKD) and switch circuits are used to reduce quiescent current so that the backup or pre-charged power can be saved. A new low phase lag (LPL) PKD circuit is designed to improve the synchronous extraction efficiency, which only requires one detection capacitor to perform positive and negative PKD. The circuit can be set at general mode (G-mode) or LPL mode (LPL-mode). Under LPL-mode, the phase lag can be reduced typically by 50%, the synchronous extraction efficiency can obtained up to 94%, while the output power can reach 659~\mu \textW when the piezoelectric transducer original open-circuit voltage V\mathrm{ oc,org}=5 V, which is 3.56 times of that of full-bridge rectifier standard energy harvesting circuit at the maximum power point. The minimum harvesting startup voltage is 1.7 V and is independent of the energy storage capacitor voltage V\mathrm{ DC} . The harvesting efficiency can still reach 71.3% at V\mathrm{ oc,org}=5 V. The size of the active area is 0.5 mm2 in a 0.18- \mu \textm CMOS technology. Circuit may be invoked as a functional block for energy autonomous wireless sensor network node of the Internet of Things. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a piezoelectric-based power management solution for battery-free wireless remote switches (BWSs). The proposed BWS IC, including a piezoelectric (PE) energy harvester and a buck converter, can collect the energy generated by a single PE-button press, and then supply that energy to a wireless transmitter to send a message. By combining a rectifier using the synchronized switch harvesting on inductor technique and a 6:1 series–parallel switched-capacitor converter, the proposed PE energy harvester can maximize the collected amount of energy, while supplying it at a low output voltage. In addition, by employing a switching-based start-up scheme and a variable ON-time pulse-frequency modulation scheme, the proposed buck converter can reduce the loss associated with charging the output capacitor during start-up, and then deliver the largest possible energy to the load, while maintaining low voltage ripples and high-power efficiency. A prototype BWS IC fabricated with high-voltage 250-nm CMOS technology was shown to be capable of harvesting a total energy of 246~\mu \textJ from a single button-pressing of a 300-mm2 lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate PE disc. More than 200~\mu \textJ was delivered to the load, sufficient to transmit a 4-B-long message via a 2.4-GHz wireless USB channel over a 10-m distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an ultralow power, high precision sub bandgap voltage reference (sub-BGR) for low-voltage self-powered devices. A novel ultralow power curvature compensation circuit is proposed to improve the temperature coefficient over a wide temperature range. A switch capacitor voltage divider with improved leakage current reduction switches is used to obtain a high accuracy and a low power. To minimize the clock feedthrough and charge injection in the switches, a clock scaling down circuit is proposed, that effectively improves the line sensitivity (LS) of the sub-BGR. The proposed sub-BGR is implemented in a 0.18- \mu \textm standard CMOS process with a total area of 0.061 mm2. After measuring 30 chips, the average power consumption is 83 nW at 0.55 V of supply at 27 °C. In the supply voltage range of 0.55 to 1 V, the LS is 0.059%/V, and the error is ±0.75% ( $3\sigma $ ) after trimming. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a low-power, area-efficient 11-b single-ended successive-approximation-register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) targeted for biomedical applications. The design features an energy-efficient switching technique with an error cancelling capacitor network. The input range is twice the reference voltage. The ADC’s loading of the previous stage is reduced by using a single-ended structure, and by eliminating the largest capacitor in the array. The common mode voltage of the input signal can be used as reference voltage. All building blocks were designed in subthreshold for power efficiency, with an asynchronous self-controlled SAR logic. The ADC was fabricated in 0.18 – \mu \textm CMOS 2P4M process. The measured peak SNDR was 60.5 dB, the SFDR was 72 dB, the DNL +0.6/−0.37 LSB, and the INL +0.94/−0.89 LSB. The total power consumption was 250 nW from 0.75-V supply voltage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a nonlinear state-space model (SSM) for a low power 28-nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor switched-capacitor digital-to-analog converter. The proposed model utilizes current–voltage (I-V) input and output relationships for passive devices, which are described by a set of first-order differential equations. The proposed model significantly increases accuracy when compared with the state-of-the-art models. The SSM simulation results have been verified using SpectreRF transistor-level simulations and validated by on-chip measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the design and implementation of a 10-bit ultra-low voltage energy-efficient successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The proposed first 2-bit guess (F2G) scheme reduces the DAC switching energy by 90% and improves the DNL and INL by \sqrt 3 /2 in theory compared with the conventional approach. By employing majority-vote comparison at the conversions of LSBs, the noise requirement of comparator can be relaxed by half. With the segmented and bundled routing, the parasitic capacitors of bottom-plates of DAC array are reduced to improve power efficiency and speed. Implemented in 90-nm CMOS technology, the test chip occupied a core area of 0.03 mm2. The prototype consumes 67.3 nW at 150 kS/s from a single 0.3 V supply voltage and achieves an ENOB of 8.85 bits and an SFDR of 70.7 dB at Nyquist input, respectively. The resultant Walden’s FoM and Schreier’s FoM are 0.97 fJ/conv.-step and 175.5 dB, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a piezoelectric energy harvesting circuit, which integrates a Synchronized Switch Harvesting on Inductor (SSHI) circuit and an active rectifier. The major design challenge of the SSHI method is flipping the capacitor voltage at optimal times. The proposed SSHI circuit inserts an active diode on each resonant loop, which ensures flipping of the capacitor voltage at optimal times and eliminates the need to tune the switching time. The diodes of the SSHI circuit are also used as a rectifier to further simplify the controller. The key advantage of the proposed circuit is a simple controller, which leads to low power dissipation of the proposed circuit to result in high efficiency. The proposed circuit is self-powered and capable of starting even when the battery is completely drained. The circuit was fabricated in BiCMOS 0.25~\mu \text m technology with a die size of 0.98 \times 0.76 mm2. Measured results indicate that the proposed circuit increases the amount of power harvested from a piezoelectric cantilever by 2.1 times when compared with a full bridge (FB) rectifier and achieves a power conversion efficiency of 85%. The proposed circuit dissipates about 24~\mu \text {W} while the controller alone only 1.5~\mu \text {W}$ . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High step-up conversion is an indispensable feature for the power processing of low voltage renewable sources in grid-connected systems. Motivated by this necessity, this paper presents a study on non-isolated dc-dc converters based on the conventional Boost converter that can provide such feature with high efficiency. By the topological variation and gain cell concepts, it is demonstrated that these converters can be treated as a unique generalized converter, called Boost Converter with Gain Cell (BCGC). The operating principle, the key waveforms and the components stresses of the BGCG are analyzed for the continuous-conduction mode, independently of the employed gain cell. A methodology to create the gain cells is developed from the combination of coupled inductors and voltage multiplier techniques. In order to verify the realized analysis, a 150 W prototype concerning to the proposed generalized converter and able to operate with several different gain cells is developed for the comparison between theoretical and experimental static gain results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents an efficient numerical methodology to obtain the frequency response of switched-capacitor filters based on the circuits' differential equations. This methodology uses a non-hierarchical approach in which the non-ideal effects of the transistors (in the switches and in the amplifier) are taken into consideration, allowing the accurate computation of the frequency response, even in the case of incomplete settling in the SC branches. The accuracy is demonstrated by comparing the results obtained using the proposed methodology with those obtained using transient electrical simulation results for three different SC circuits: a first order SC passive filter, a second order SC lowpass filter, and a second order SC bandpass filter, showing that the results are in good agreement with the more time consuming electrical simulation of the circuits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a low-voltage and power-efficient 10 bit successive-approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The input-range-adaptive (IRA) switching method is proposed to reduce the average switching power of capacitive digital-to-analog convertor (DAC) by 91% compared with the conventional approach. By utilizing the comparator as a voltage-to-time converter (VTC) with a time-domain quantizer, the implemented early-late (E/L) detection circuit, the input range is detected to eliminate the unnecessary DAC switching power efficiently. A prototype ADC chip is fabricated in 90 nm CMOS technology with an active area of 0.038 mm2. At 0.35-to-0.5 V supply voltage and 0.3-to-2 MS/s sampling rate with a Nyquist input, the ADC achieves a signal-to-noise-plus-distortion ratio (SNDR) of 55.5 dB to 56.3 dB and a corresponding effective number of bits (ENOB) of 8.92 bit to 9.06 bit respectively with a power consumption of 0.3~\mu \text W to 2.5~\mu \text W and a resulting figure of merit (FoM) from 1.94 fJ/conversion-step to 2.32 fJ/conversion-step. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A 12-bit 10 MS/s SAR ADC with enhanced linearity and energy efficiency is presented in this paper. A novel switching scheme (COSS) is proposed to reduce the power consumption and the matching requirement for capacitors in SAR ADCs. The switching energy (including switching energy and reset energy), total capacitance and static performance (INL & DNL) of the proposed scheme are reduced by 98.08%, 75%, and 75%, respectively, compared with the conventional architecture. Based on analysis of the non-linear errors caused by comparator input parasitic capacitance, an improved comparator with push-pull pre-amplifier and output offset storage (OOS) strategy is proposed to diminish non-linearity in the input parasitic capacitance. The offset cancellation signal for the comparator can be generated by asynchronous timing automatically, without any extra clock. Additionally, an SFDR enhancement bootstrap switch is proposed to eliminate the distortion induced by parasitic capacitance and threshold voltage that results in insufficient precision for medium-speed 12-bit ADCs. The proposed ADC was fabricated in a 0.18 \mu\textm 1P6M CMOS process, and the measured results show that the ADC achieves an SNDR of 66.9 dB and an SFDR of 75.8 dB with a 10 MS/s sampling rate and consumes 0.82 mW, resulting in a figure of merit (FOM) of 44.2 fJ/conversion-step. The peak DNL error is +0.36/−0.33 LSB, and the peak INL error is +0.55 LSB/−0.6 LSB. The ADC core occupies an active area of only 630\ \mu\textm\! \times\! 570\ \mu\textm^2. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A frequently occurring subcircuit consists of a loop of a resistor (R), a field-effect transistor (FET), and a capacitor (C). The FET acts as a switch, controlled at its gate terminal by a clock voltage. There may be many such identical circuits connected in parallel, each driven by a different phase of the clock. This subcircuit may be acting as a sample-and-hold (S/H), as a passive mixer (P-M), or as a bandpass filter or bandpass impedance. In this work, we will present a useful analysis that leads to a simple signal flow graph (SFG), which captures the FET-R-C circuit's action completely across a wide range of design parameters. The SFG dissects the circuit into three filtering functions and ideal sampling. This greatly simplifies analysis of frequency response, noise, input impedance, and conversion gain, and leads to guidelines for optimum design. The analysis is extended to multi-path realizations common in RF applications. Part I of this paper focuses on the analyses of a single-path FET-R-C circuit's signal transfer characteristics. Part II extends these analyses to multi-path FET-R-C circuit configurations, which is followed by the noise and driving-point impedance analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the power losses of efficient capacitive converters with multitude transfer ratio values are discussed. The loss mechanism circuits, based on general transposed series parallel (GTSP) topology, is studied and the losses are calculated, which in turn enables the “bottlenecks” to be identified and overcome. The calculations show that for a given number of switching cells the power losses of such converters are mainly dependent on the voltage conversion ratio, the topology function, the resistances of the switches in on and off states, the ESR of the capacitors, the switching frequency, the voltage drop, and the load. The theory explains the fact that was observed in experiments, that for low voltage conversion ratio values, efficiency decrease was measured. It is shown that for these low voltage ratio values the mechanism associated to the off resistance of the switches is more dominant and reduces the efficiency. This power loss estimation can be used as a powerful tool for the performance optimization of capacitive converters. The theoretical results are verified experimentally on a 10-cell GTSP converter prototype. The experimental results show good agreement with the proposed theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a 10-bit ultra-low power successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for implantable medical devices. To achieve the nanowatt range power consumption, a novel switching scheme is proposed, which can accomplish the first three comparisons without consuming any energy and thus improve the energy efficiency significantly. In addition, to boost the offset performance of the comparator working under low supply voltage, a detailed theoretical analysis of comparator offset voltages is made. Based on the analysis, the comparator is optimized by only adjusting transistor sizes without any particular offset cancellation. As a result, when the common-mode input voltage varies from 300 mV to 450 mV at a 0.6 V supply, the 3\times\sigma offset voltage is optimized to be about 6 mV with a fluctuation of only 0.15 mV, as revealed by Monte Carlo simulations. A prototype of the proposed ADC was fabricated in 0.18 \mum 1P6M CMOS technology, which occupies an active area of only 380\times 430\ \mum^2. At a 0.6-V supply and 20 kS/s sampling rate, the ADC achieves an SNDR of 58.3 dB and a power consumption of 38 nW, resulting in a figure of merit (FOM) of 2.8 fJ/conversion-step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies linear passive electrical networks with ideal switches. We employ the so-called linear switched systems framework in which these circuits can be analyzed for any given switch configuration. After providing a complete characterization of admissible inputs and consistent initial states with respect to a switch configuration, the paper introduces a new state reinitialization rule that is based on energy minimization at the time of switching. This new rule is proven to be equivalent to the classical methods of Laplace transform and charge/flux conservation principle. Also we illustrate the new rule on typical examples that have been treated in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a new energy efficient successive approximation analog-to-digital converter (ADC) using a charge recycling and LSB-down switching scheme for the capacitive digital-to-analog converter (CDAC). Compared to the conventional binary weighed CDAC, the proposed technique exhibits a 95% reduction in switching energy, a 50% reduction in capacitor area, and with 30% reduction in nonlinearity under the same unit capacitor size and matching condition. The improvement on the switching energy consumption is the best among reported CDAC switching techniques. To validate the technique, a prototype of 10-bit ADC is fabricated in a 0.13 \mum CMOS technology using standard capacitors. With a unit capacitor size of 30 fF, the ADC consumes 15.6 \muW from a 0.5 V digital supply and a 1 V analog supply. The measured signal-to-noise-plus- distortion ratio is 54.6 dB (ENOB=8.8) at 1.1 MS/s. The FOM is 31.8 fJ/conv.-step, which is among the best when normalized to the same unit capacitor size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a 10-bit ultra-low voltage energy-efficient SAR ADC. The proposed merge-and-split (MS) switching effectively reduces DAC switching energy by 83% compared with conventional one without the need of extra reference voltage (Vcm) and the issue of common-mode voltage variation. To maintain good input linearity, a new double-bootstrapped sample-and-hold (S/H) circuit is proposed under an ultra-low voltage of 0.3 V. In addition, by employing asymmetric logic in SAR control, the leakage power is reduced with the penalty of slight conversion speed degradation. The test chip fabricated in 90 nm CMOS occupied a core area of 0.03 mm^2. With a single 0.3 V supply and a Nyquist rate input, the prototype consumes 35 nW at 90 kS/s and achieves an ENOB of 8.38 bit and a SFDR of 78.2 dB, respectively. The operation frequency is scalable up to 2 MS/s and power supply range from 0.3 V to 0.5 V. The resultant FOMs are 1.17-to-1.78 fJ/conv.-step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple-supply are required to minimize the power consumptions in bio-implant systems. A single-inductor multiple-output (SIMO) switching converter is one of the solutions. But it has inherent problems which block the applications in the embedded biomedical systems. In this paper, a circuit arrangement for providing multiple outputs based on low-dropout (LDO) regulator is proposed. The regulating transistor of LDO is time-shared by N output legs. Two error amplifiers (EAs) are utilized in the topology, irrespective of number of the output legs. The corresponding switching strategy alleviates the difficulties associated with controlling multiple switching functions for conventional time-sharing methods, and thus, permits multiple outputs to be generated easily. A prototype multiple-output LDO (MOLDO) regulator with four output legs was fabricated with a standard 0.35 \mu\ m CMOS process. The measurement results verify the good performance of this design such as no cross regulation (CR), small ripples, and less power consumption. Moreover, it does not require inductor and presents low total harmonic distortion, which is very suitable for bio-implant fields. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Optimal switching between different topologies in step-down dc–dc voltage converters, with nonideal inductors and capacitors, is investigated in this paper. Challenges including constraint on the inductor current and voltage leakages across the capacitor (due to switching) are incorporated. The objective is generating the desired voltage with low ripples and high robustness toward line and load disturbances. A previously developed tool, which is based on approximate dynamic programming, is adapted for this application. The scheme leads to tuning a parametric function approximator to provide optimal switching in a feedback form. No fixed cycle time is assumed, as the cycle time and the duty ratio will be adjusted on the fly in an optimal fashion. The controller demonstrates good capabilities in controlling the system even under parameter uncertainties. Finally, some modifications on the scheme are conducted to handle optimal switching problems with state jumps at the switching times. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A third-order passive switched-capacitor low-pass filter is presented together with experimental results. The current input-voltage output filter structure realizes complex-conjugate poles although it is composed of switches and capacitors. The results are verified with measurements performed on the filter prototype integrated in a 0.13- $\mu \text{m}$ CMOS technology. The prototype has a cut-off frequency of 470 kHz, 150- $\mu \text{W}$ power consumption from 1.2-V power supply, 92-dB SFDR, and an active area of 0.06 mm2. The switch-capacitor filter was obtained using a continuous-time model that is also described here and is useful for design, analysis, and simulation of oversampled switched-capacitor circuits. The model is applicable to a variety of topologies including multi-phase passive switched-capacitor filters, switched-capacitor integrators, as well as switched-capacitor dc/dc converters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A systematic approach is presented to analyze the switching pair linearity of low intermediate frequency (IF) up-conversion mixers. The approach explicitly divides the switching pair operation of the mixer into two steps–conversion of the low IF input to the common-source node voltage, in a common-mode domain, and conversion of the common-source node voltage to the output, in a differential-mode domain. In this way, closed-form formulas of the signal gain and third-order intermodulation distortions (IMD3) are derived, demonstrating that the even harmonics (mainly twice local oscillator frequency harmonics) on the common-source node affects the linearity performance significantly. As a result, the mixer linearity is strongly sensitive to the common-source node parasitic reactance. To suppress the even harmonics, we adopt a harmonic-trapping (HT) capacitor and demonstrate 9.1 dB improvement in OIP3 from the fabricated chip prototypes. The analysis approach and HT technique are further validated by well-matched analytical predictions, simulation and measurement results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A low energy-noise switched-capacitor (SC) sensor interface for resistive bridge sensor is presented. The SC amplifier achieves low-power metric with two operating modes using operation-phase-dependent biasing and compensation scheme in the op-amp design. This novel op-amp works in high-bandwidth high-power mode to sample the bridge signal for 13\mu \text s twice and in low-bandwidth low-power mode for 474\mu \text s over 500\mu \text s measurement interval. To further reduce the power of the SC amplifier in system level, a SC level-shift design is adopted. Regarding offset calibration, a capacitor divider based trimming scheme is implemented to generate the mid-point DC output voltage under the constraint of the feedback capacitor size. Implemented in 65 nm CMOS, the SC interface together with the regulator, voltage reference and trimming circuit occupies an area of 0.358 mm2. For the first test setup utilizing Half Wheatstone Bridge, the proposed SC amplifier consumes 12.3\mu \text W at 1 V regulated supply with a 2 kHz system clock. The measured Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of SC circuit is 55.6 dB. In the second test setup using a commercial sensor with 0.092 mV/kPa sensitivity, the interface has demonstrated the sensing function with sensitivity of 3.52 mV/kPa. Finally, compared to the representative prior-arts, this work has achieved the best energy-noise figure-of-merit at identical fractional resistance change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple graph with four nodes and eleven branches is defined. Its branches are filled in different ways with passive elements (capacitors, inductors, diodes) or replaced by shortcircuits in order to get potential voltage step-up switching cells. These cells are inserted in boost converter, obtaining thus non-isolated power electronics circuits with a very high dc gain. Such circuits are necessary today in the green energy systems. The proposed circuits feature a lower voltage stress on its semiconductors (both switch and diodes) than that on the equivalent devices of a boost stage. A state-space-based dc and ac analysis allows for deriving the dc gain, the switches voltage and current stresses, and the frequency characteristics of the obtained converters. The steady-state analysis is performed for both the continuous and discontinuous conduction mode operations. The converters belonging to the new family are compared between them and then compared with available solutions of similar complexity as defined by the component count. Simulation and experimental results confirm the theoretical equations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An analysis of a novel single-ended Class-E mode with shunt capacitance and shunt filter with explicit derivation of the idealized optimum voltage and current waveforms and load-network parameters with their verification by frequency domain simulations with 50% duty ratio is presented. The ideal collector voltage and current waveforms demonstrate a possibility of 100% efficiency. The circuit design with transmission lines at 2.14 GHz is discussed and analyzed. In order to reduce the voltage peak factor, the load network parameters can be rearranged to correspond to Class-E/F 3 mode by providing a short-circuit condition at the third harmonic when the second-harmonic tank is connected in series to the shunt filter. Broadband capability of a Class-E mode with shunt filter using reactance compensation technique has been demonstrated by two examples, one with lumped elements and the other with transmission-line elements. The test board of a transmission-line broadband Class-E GaN HEMT power amplifier with shunt filter was measured and high-performance results with the output power of around 41 dBm, average drain efficiency of 68%, and power gain of about 9 dB were achieved across the frequency band from 1.4 to 2.7 GHz. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An analytical method is presented to characterize stepwise adiabatic circuits (SACs). In this method, the SACs are modeled as a discrete time system. Unlike previous methods, the stability is verified for arbitrary load capacitor ratios. Moreover, this method presents analytical derivations to offer an area/energy efficient design methodology. MATLAB simulations, post-layout simulations in the CMOS 0.18 \mum technology, silicon measurements, and measurements based on discrete components confirm the precision of the analytical derivations. Using the proposed design methodology, a capacitive tank has been designed which reduces the energy consumption by 20% while the total size of the tank capacitors is smaller than 0.4CL. Additionally, a new switching procedure for the SACs is presented. This procedure stabilizes the voltage levels without reverse switching, unlike previously reported methods. Thus preserving the energy efficiency, it improves the speed by a factor of up to two, since the tank recycles its charge inherently. Moreover, the capacitive load can retain its charge after the charging process and let the tank charges another load capacitor. As a result, the proposed switching procedure can be used in multi-cycle circuits such as the capacitive DAC of a SAR ADC in which the load capacitor must hold its charge after charging process is finished. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An asynchronous successive approximation register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for sensor applications is presented. High linear and power efficient switching scheme is proposed. The proposed low leakage latched dynamic cell in SAR logic and wide range configurable delay element extend the flexibility of speed and resolution tradeoff. The ADC fabricated in 0.18 \mum CMOS process covers 6–10 bit resolution and 0.5 V–0.9 V power supply range. At 10 bit mode and 0.5 V operation, the proposed SAR ADC achieves 56.36 dB SNDR and 67.96 dB SFDR with sampling rate up to 2 MS/s, corresponding to a figure-of-merit of 20.6 fJ/conversion-step. The proposed ADC core occupies an active area of about 300\times 700~ \mum^2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mechanism for the reduction of dynamic energy dissipation based on energy recovery resonant switching in a computing circuit is described. The resonant circuit with controlled switches conserves energy by recovering 90% of energy that would be otherwise lost during logic state transitions. The new approach of incorporating an energy recovery storage capacitor in the resonant circuit helps to initialize the logic operation and moves the energy back and forth to the load capacitance. This energy-conserving approach preserves thermodynamic entropy, ideally preventing heat generation in the system. This proposed method is used for generating an energy-efficient “flat-topped” (quasi-trapezoidal) waveform, which is required to perform the low power digital logic computation, especially for clocking in the system applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent development in computer science that the power demand and required time of code execution can be accurately predicted is paving a path that may lead to a new paradigm shift in power supply design. Specifically, while the design of power supplies now normally assumes that load current changes at random times and with unknown magnitudes (within a range), future computer loads may communicate with power supplies to provide information that facilitates power management. Such information would include the exact times of occurrence of load transients and their magnitudes. Following this trend of development where the power supply is “informed” by the load, we propose to use an auxiliary circuit that generates a slowly rising current prior to the occurrence of the actual transient. The slowly rising current can cause the power supply to shift its operation point to a new level slowly without exhibiting output voltage fluctuation. The actual load exhibits very fast current transient, but the combination of actual load and auxiliary circuit behaves as a slowly changing load which can be dealt with by an ordinary power supply capable of handling slowly changing load current. Thus, this method essentially buffers the power supply from large and fast transients. Our proposed approach involves the necessary algorithm for controlling the auxiliary circuit in accordance with the information provided by the microprocessor. The design of the auxiliary circuit is explained and experimental results for a 1.5 V load with 15 A step current are provided for verification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A triple-mode step-up/step-down switched-capacitor DC-DC converter is proposed, and it can work with a wide input voltage range. There are three operational modes in the proposed converter: triple-step-up, double-step-up, and step-down modes. A built-in clock generator was designed to generate a constant switching frequency, independent of the input voltage. The proposed circuit was implemented by a 0.35-\mum CMOS mixed-signal 2P4M 3.3/5 V polycide process with a die area of 1.56\times 1.47\ mm^2. The output voltage is fixed at 3.3 V, while the input voltage range is 1.8–5 V. The maximal load current for a 1.8-V input voltage is 10 mA, while it increases to 30 mA when the input voltage is larger than 3 V. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]