A current-mode PWM buck DC-DC converter is proposed. With the high-accuracy on-chip current sen- sor, the switching frequency can be selected automatically according to load requirements. This method improves efficiency and obtains an excellent transient response. The high accuracy of the current sensor is achieved by a simple switch technique without an amplifier. This has the direct benefit of reducing power dissipation and die size. Additionally, a novel soft-start circuit is presented to avoid the inrush current at the starting up state. Finally, this DC-DC converter is fabricated with the 0.5μm standard CMOS process. The chip occupies 3.38 mm2. The accuracy of the proposed current sensor can achieve 99.5% @ 200 mA. Experimental results show that the peak efficiency is 91.8%. The input voltage ranges from 5 to 18 V, while a 2 A load current can be obtained.
A low power high gain gain-controlled LNA ＋ mixer for GNSS receivers is reported. The high gain LNA is realized with a current source load. Its gain-controlled ability is achieved using a programmable bias circuit. Taking advantage of the high gain LNA, a high noise figure passive mixer is adopted. With the passive mixer, low power consumption and high voltage gain of the LNA ＋ mixer are achieved. To fully investigate the performance of this circuit, comparisons between a conventional LNA ＋ mixer, a previous low power LNA ＋ mixer, and the proposed LNA ＋ mixer are presented. The circuit is implemented in 0.18 #m mixed-signal CMOS technology. A 3.8 dB noise figure, an overall 45 dB converge gain and a 10 dB controlled gain range of the two stages are measured. The chip occupies 0.24 mm2 and consumes 2 mA current under 1.8 V supply.
A single lithium-ion battery protection circuit with high reliability and low power consumption is proposed. The protection circuit has high reliability because the voltage and current of the battery are controlled in a safe range. The protection circuit can immediately activate a protective function when the voltage and current of the battery are beyond the safe range. In order to reduce the circuit＇s power consumption, a sleep state control circuit is developed. Additionally, the output frequency of the ring oscillation can be adjusted continuously and precisely by the charging capacitors and the constant-current source. The proposed protection circuit is fabricated in a 0.5 μm mixed-signal CMOS process. The measured reference voltage is 1.19 V, the overvoltage is 4.2 V and the undervoltage is 2.2 V. The total power is about 9 μW.
A wide band, injection-coupled LC quadrature voltage control oscillator is presented. In the proposed circuit, two oscillators are injection locked by coupling their second-order harmonics in anti-phase, forcing the outputs of two oscillators into a quadrature phase state. As the common-mode point sampling the second har- monic frequency, flicker noise of the tail current is suppressed, the phase noise is reduced .The proposed design accomplishes a wide tuning frequency range by a combination of using a 5-bit switch capacitor array （SCA） for discrete tuning in addition to linearly varying AMOS varactors for continuous tuning. The proposed design has been fabricated and verified in a 0.18/zm TSMC CMOS technology process. The measurement indicates that the quadrature voltage controlled oscillator has a 41.7% tuning range from 3.53 to 5.39 GHz. The measured phase noise is 127.98 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset at a 1.8 V supply voltage with a power consumption of 12 mW at a carrier frequency of 4.85 GHz.
A fully integrated LED driver based on a current mode PWM boost DC-DC converter with constant output current is proposed. In order to suppress the inrush of current and the overshoot voltage at the start up state, a soft-start circuit is adopted. Additionally, to adjust the LED brightness without color variation over the full dimming range and achieve high efficiency, a PWM dimming circuit is presented. Furthermore, to keep the loop stability of the LED driver, an internal slope compensation network is designed to avoid the sub-harmonic oscillation when the duty cycle exceeds 50%. Finally, a UVLO circuit is adopted to improve the reliability of the LED driver against the input voltage changing. The LED driver has been fabricated with a standard 0.5/xm CMOS process, and only occupies 1.21 × 0.76 mm^2. Experimental results show that the brightness of the LED can be adjusted by an off- chip PWM signal with a wide adjusting range. The inductor current and output current increase smoothly over the whole load range. The chip is in the UVLO condition when the input voltage is below 2.18 V and has achieved about 137 μs typical start-up time.
