Switchable active element for inductor-capacitor (LC) voltage controlled oscillator
AssigneeQUALCOMM Incorporated
InventorsBurcin Serter Ergun, Jose Luis Sanchez, Sajin Mohamad, Zhiqin Chen, Ashwith Jerome Rego
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Abstract
An apparatus, comprising: a first upper voltage rail; a lower voltage rail; a set of voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) active cores, wherein one or more of the set of VCO active cores is selectively coupled to the first upper voltage rail based on a control signal, wherein the set of the VCO active cores are coupled to the lower voltage rail or the one or more of the set of VCO active cores is selectively coupled to the lower voltage rail based on the control signal; and a tank circuit coupled to the set of VCO active cores.
Claims18
An apparatus, comprising:
- a first upper voltage rail;
- a lower voltage rail;
- a set of voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) active cores, wherein one or more of the set of VCO active cores is selectively coupled to the first upper voltage rail based on a control signal, wherein the set of the VCO active cores are coupled to the lower voltage rail or the one or more of the set of VCO active cores is selectively coupled to the lower voltage rail based on the control signal;
- a tank circuit coupled to the set of VCO active cores;
- and
- a control circuit, including
- a differential difference amplifier configured to generate a calibration signal based on a first difference between first and second voltages at respective ports of the tank circuit, and a second difference between first and second reference voltages;
- and
- a calibration engine configured to generate the control signal based on the calibration signal.
A method, comprising:
- operating a first set of switching devices to selectively couple one or more of a set of voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) active cores to a first upper voltage rail based on a configuration parameter, wherein the set of VCO active cores are coupled to a tank circuit;
- and
- setting a reference voltage applied to a low dropout (LDO) voltage regulator based on the configuration parameter, the LDO voltage regulator coupled between a second upper voltage rail and the first upper voltage rail,
- wherein the configuration parameter is based on a first difference between first and second voltages at respective ports of the tank circuit, and a second difference between first and second reference voltages.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.