A 12-bit Hybrid Digital Pulse Width Modulator

Abstract

In this paper, a 12-bit high resolution, power and area efficiency hybrid digital pulse width modulator (DPWM) with process and temperature (PT) calibration has been proposed for digital controlled DC-DC converters. The hybrid structure of DPWM combines a 6-bit differential tapped delay line ring-mux digital-to-time converter (DTC) schema and a 6-bit counter-comparator DTC schema, resulting in a power and area saving solution. Furthermore, since the 6-bit differential delay line ring oscillator serves as the clock to the high 6-bit counter-comparator DTC, a high frequency clock is eliminated, and the power is significantly saved. In order to have a simple delay cell and flexible delay time controllability, a voltage controlled inverter is adopted to build the deferential delay cell, which allows fine-tuning of the delay time. The PT calibration circuit is composed of process and temperature monitors, two 2-bit flash ADCs and a lookup table. The monitor circuits sense the PT (Process and Temperature) variations, and the flash ADC converts the data into a digital code. The complete circuits design has been verified under different corners of CMOS 0.18um process technology node.