The Oscillation Frequency of CML-based Multipath Ring Oscillators

Abstract

A novel phase interpolator (PI) based linear model of multipath ring oscillator (MPRO) is described in this paper. By modeling each delay cell as an ideal summer followed by a single pole RC filter, the oscillation frequency is derived for a 4-stage differential MPRO. It is analytically proved that the oscillation frequency increases with the growth of the forwarding factor α, which is also confirmed quantitatively through simulation. Based on the proposed model, it is shown that the power to frequency ratio keeps constant as the speed increases. Running at the same speed, a 4-stage MPRO can outperform the corresponding single-stage ring oscillator (SPRO) with 27% power saving, making MPRO with a large forwarding factor α an attractive option for lower power applications.