Back to results
US 10,566,930 B2Granted
Dynamically controlling a negative impedance of a voltage controlled oscillator
AssigneeSilicon Laboratories Inc.
InventorsKrishna Pentakota, Aslamali Rafi
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
In one embodiment, an apparatus includes a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) to output an oscillating signal. The VCO may have a tank formed of at least one capacitor coupled in parallel with at least one inductor, and a plurality of transconductors to provide energy to the tank. At least one of the plurality of transconductors can be controllably switched to be coupled to the tank or to be decoupled from the tank.
Claims18
An apparatus comprising:
- a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) to output an oscillating signal, the VCO having:
- a tank formed of at least one capacitor coupled in parallel with at least one inductor;
- and
- a plurality of transconductors to provide energy to the tank, at least one of the plurality of transconductors to be controllably switched to be coupled to the tank or to be decoupled from the tank;
- and
- a voltage regulator coupled to provide an operating voltage to the VCO, wherein the voltage regulator dynamically adjusts the operating voltage based, at least in part, on a sum of threshold voltages of complementary transistors that are included within the voltage regulator to track a process corner of the VCO;
- wherein the voltage regulator comprises a replica circuit to track the process corner of the VCO, wherein the replica circuit comprises an N-channel metal oxide semiconductor (NMOS) transistor and a P-channel MOS (PMOS) transistor coupled in a current mirror configuration, and wherein the voltage regulator dynamically adjusts the operating voltage provided to the VCO based, at least in part, on a sum of threshold voltages of the NMOS transistor and the PMOS transistor.
4 more elements
A method comprising:
- measuring at least one operating parameter of a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO);
- in response to the at least one operating parameter varying from a threshold range, coupling at least one controllable transconductor slice to the VCO;
- and
- dynamically controlling an output voltage of a voltage regulator coupled to the VCO in response to the at least one operating parameter varying from the threshold range, wherein said dynamically controlling the output voltage comprises adjusting the output voltage based, at least in part, on a sum of threshold voltages of complementary transistors that are included within the voltage regulator to track a process corner of the VCO;
- wherein the voltage regulator comprises a replica circuit configured to track the process corner of the VCO, wherein the replica circuit comprises an N-channel metal oxide semiconductor (NMOS) transistor and a P-channel MOS (PMOS) transistor coupled in a current mirror configuration, and wherein said dynamically controlling the output voltage of the voltage regulator comprises dynamically adjusting the output voltage based, at least in part, on a sum of threshold voltages of the NMOS transistor and the PMOS transistor.
2 more elements
A system comprising:
- an amplifier to receive a radio frequency (RF) signal and amplify the RF signal;
- a mixer to downconvert the amplified RF signal to a second frequency signal according to a mixing signal;
- a digitizer to digitize the second frequency signal into a digitized signal;
- a signal processor to process the digitized signal;
- a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) to output an oscillating signal, the mixing signal based on the oscillating signal, the VCO comprising:
- a tank formed of at least one capacitor coupled in parallel with at least one inductor;
- and
- a plurality of transconductors to provide energy to the tank, at least one of the plurality of transconductors to be switchably coupled to the tank or decoupled from the tank based, at least in part, on one or more of a process corner of the system and an operating parameter of the VCO;
- and
- a voltage regulator coupled to provide an operating voltage to the VCO, wherein the voltage regulator comprises a replica circuit to track the process corner of the system, wherein the replica circuit comprises an N-channel metal oxide semiconductor (NMOS) transistor and a P-channel MOS (PMOS) transistor coupled in a current mirror configuration, and wherein the voltage regulator dynamically adjusts the operating voltage provided to the VCO based, at least in part, on a sum of threshold voltages of the NMOS transistor and the PMOS transistor.
7 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.