Temperature-compensated ring oscillator circuit formed on a semiconductor substrate

Abstract

An improved ring oscillator is disclosed which can be formed in a semiconductor substrate. The ring oscillator includes inverters cascaded in a ring-like manner, and a diffused resistor R1 having a positive temperature coefficient and a polysilicon resistor R2 having a negative temperature coefficient for determining bias currents supplied to the inverters. The oscillation frequency tends to decrease with a rise of ambient temperature based on a temperature characteristic of diffused resistor R1 and a temperature characteristic of the oscillator circuit itself; however, the change of oscillation frequency is compensated by a temperature characteristic of polysilicon resistor R2. Therefore, a reference clock signal generating circuit having an oscillation frequency which is not affected by change of the ambient temperature can be formed in the semiconductor substrate.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.