A Magnetic Field-to-Digital Converter Employing a Spin-Torque Nano-Oscillator

Abstract

In this work, a novel magnetic field-to-digital converter based on emerging spin-torque nano-oscillators (STNOs) is proposed. The architecture is inspired by voltage controlled oscillator (VCO)-based analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) which have shown inherent first-order noise shaping of both quantization- and phase-noise without the need for feedback. In the proposed architecture, the STNO acts both as a magnetic field sensor and VCO. The architecture's performance is evaluated in terms of signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) utilizing Verilog-AMS modeling, where a macrospin model fitted to experimental data is employed for accurate description of the STNO operation. The presented simulation results demonstrate the potential of the STNO-based magnetic field-to-digital converter architecture.