Advisor(s)

Yong-Bin Kim

Contributor(s)

Fabrizio Lombardi, Elizabeth Podlaha-Murphy, Nian Xiang Sun

Date of Award

2011

Date Accepted

4-2011

Degree Grantor

Northeastern University

Degree Level

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department or Academic Unit

College of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Keywords

eElectrical engineering, digital phase locked loop, ADPLL, PLL

Disciplines

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Abstract

This dissertation presents a proposed all digital phase locked loop and a digitally controlled oscillator with low power consumption for fractional-N frequency synthesis applications. The basic operation of the conventional PLL-based frequency synthesizers is rst briely reviewed, followed by the literature review of some reported digital PLL based frequency synthesizer. An all digital PLL is thus proposed, including the system architecture and implementations of its sub-blocks. In the proposed all digital PLL, the PFD-TDC pair used in many reported digital PLLs is replaced by a customized time-to-digital converter. A novel Schmitt trigger based digital controlled oscillator is proposed to achieve a wide linear tuning range with low power consumption.

The novel locking process of the proposed ADPLL is separated into frequency and phase acquisition. Instead of "ahead" or "behind" comparison, the time-to-digital converter is used to measure the frequency dierence accurately, which greatly reduces the lock-in time. The phase acquisition only takes two reference clocks. One cycle for resetting the DCO and the other cycle for updating the control considering the path delay.

To further prove the feasibility of the novel ADPLL, a fractional-N frequency synthesizer is implemented based on the proposed ADPLL. An extra TDC is applied to obtain the fractional value avoiding the use of fractional divider, which is the main source of fractional spur in a fractional-N frequency synthesizer. The proposed Fractional-N frequency synthesizer is implemented using a 0.9V 32nm Practical Transistor Model. The phase noise performance, the frequency locking speed as well as the tuning range of the digitally controlled oscillator was measured and well agrees with the theoretical analysis.

Document Type

Dissertation

Rights Information

copyright 2011

Rights Holder

Jun Zhao



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