Double gate FinFET based mixed-signal design: A VCO case study

Abstract

This paper investigates mixed-signal design for double-gate (DG) FinFET technology using a current-starved voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) as a case study. Design issues of the DG FinFET-based VCO is presented in a comparative perspective with a classical CMOS VCO. The DG FinFET VCO is analyzed for the figures-of-merit like center frequency, frequency-voltage (f-v) characteristics. Statistical process variation analysis is presented to study the variability in DG FinFET VCO. Models are investigated for the f-v characteristics and width quantization-aware modeling has been presented for the FinFET-based VCO. The models can be used for fast design optimization. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper that examines DG FinFET technology for circuit-level mixed signal design while presenting a comparative between classical CMOS and DG FinFET technologies.