Temperature compensated oscillator including MEMS resonator for frequency control
AssigneeThe Regents of the University of California
InventorsEmmanuel P. Quevy, Roger T. Howe
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Abstract
Disclosed is an oscillator that relies on redundancy of similar resonators integrated on chip in order to fulfill the requirement of one single quartz resonator. The immediate benefit of that approach compared to quartz technology is the monolithic integration of the reference signal function, implying smaller devices as well as cost and power savings.
Claims22
A temperature compensated oscillator comprising:
- a) an oscillator circuit,
- b) an array of resonators with each resonator connectable with the oscillator circuit to establish oscillation frequency, each resonator having a temperature dependent oscillation frequency with the oscillation frequencies occurring in a fixed frequency range and over a range of temperature, and
- c) a switch for selectively switching each resonator with the oscillator circuit depending on temperature.
A temperature sensor comprising first and second sensor oscillators each including an integrated circuit in a semiconductor substrate and a sensor resonator in parallel with a sensor oscillator and establishing oscillation frequency of the sensor oscillator, the sensor resonators having different temperature sensitivities whereby the difference in frequency between the sensor oscillators is temperature dependent, and apparatus responsive to the outputs of the sensor oscillators for determining a frequency difference in the outputs as a measure of temperature.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.