A TVC based Clock Fault Detection Circuit for Modern Clock Distribution Network

Abstract

Modern clock distribution design continues to face challenges in spite of significant advances in the last decade. Clock fault has become a problem in clock distribution network (CDN) in recent years as clock frequency is more than 1GHz now. In this paper, we propose a time-to-voltage converter (TVC) based on-line clock fault detect circuit to enhance flexibility and reliability in design of CDN, which only consists of twelve transistors and two minor capacitors. The proposed circuit transforms the clock fault to deviation of voltage (TVC) but without constant current source and analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Simulation-based results show that the proposed circuit can enhance the reliability of clock distribution network and detect clock jitter fault on-chip as high as 1GHz.