Voltage Controlled Ring Oscillator with Wide Tuning Range

and Fast Voltage Swing

Nicodimus Retdian, Shigetaka Takagi*

Nobuo Fujii'

Tokyo Institute of Technology

2-12-1 Oookayama, Meguro
Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo Institute of Technology

2-12-1 Oookayama, Meguro
Tokyo, Japan

nico, takagi Qec.ss.titech.ac.jp

fuj Qec.ss.titech.ac.jp

ABSTRACT

in f-v cliaractcristic occurs a t high oscillat.iun frequencics

(large bias currents)

A new dcsign of a voltagc controlled ring oscillator is proposed. The proposed design allows an implerncntation of a
low frequency ring oscillator using relatively small dcvices
and Icss stages. A voltage controllcd ring oscillator with
t,uiiing range from 40112 t,o 380bIHc is achieved using the
proposed Inct,hod. In addition: the proposed circuit enables
ttic oittgut, voltage to swing faster than tlic conventional
one.

This paper proposes a new design niettrod af a ring oscillator

hased \CO.Section 2 will describe t,he cunneiitiunal voltagc
comrolled ring oscillat,or. It will bc tlieii followed by the
basic idca and implenientation of t,he proposed circuit in
sec1:ion 3. F i r d y , sinnilation results ancl conclusions will be
given i i i sections 4 and 5 respectively.

Keywords

2. CONVENTIONAL CIRCUIT

ring oscillator, v-oltage controlled oscillatur: inverter

A convcntional voltagc controllcd ring oscillator circuit is

1. INTRODUCTION

shown in Fig.1 where ' \I is an odd number and s l i o u s the

numher uf inverter stages. Assurne that tlre gate to source
parasitic capacitaiices Ccs of the NMOS and PIvIOS tiansislors are cqual as is shuivn i n Fig.?. Hcrc tlre frequency ol
the oscillat.iou can be found as

A voltagc controllcd

oscillator (VCO) is oiie of the important,

basic building blocks in analog m c 1 digital circuits [l].[Z];[:i].
For cmniple. a VCO i.i the main building block ill phase
locked loop (I'LL) and cluck generator circuits. Tlierc are
so many difkrerit impleirientatioiis of VCOs. One uf t,herri
is thc ring oscillator based \'CO1 which is cummorily nsed
in the clock generat,ion.

Thc couventioual ring oscillator, bascd \IC0 uses variable

bias currents to control its oscillation frequency. Howcver,
when the bias current is quite small; the \&age swiiig of
the \'CO will bccome slower (longer rise/f;lll timc). That is
n u t dosirahlc in soinc applicatioris. In addition, increasing
bias current r i l l make the voltage Ireadroom of the currcnt
source NOS trnnsisturs becumc narruu~.'I'lms: a SdtUratiOli

where r is the delay of one inverter stage. Using Fig.2. t,lie

delay of each iiwe~ierstage will be given by

/%C
i t,

(2)

IG,,Cc:
r = Id7,

(3)

If",,,

w l ~ e r cI<,,, is the oscillation amplitude. Substituting ( 3 ) into

(1) will give

*The authors m c nit,h thc Depc. of Cummnnicat,ions and

Integratcd Systems, Graduate School of Sciences and Engineerings, Tokyo Institute of Tecbnolugy.
t'I.1~nutliur is with the Dept. of Physical Electronics, Graduate School af Scienccs and Engiiieeringsl Tokyo Iiistituie of
Technology.

Here the oscillation frcqiiency is determined by the current

nrtriibcr of stagss A'; the ainplitiide l/,,, arid the
parasitic capacitance CG. For a given number of st,ages, i.he
oscillation frequency can ha cuntrolled by vary-ing coutral
current or amplitude only since Cc: is a fixed parailleter.
Control sclieme by varying thc current is commonly used.
I c i r . i >the

Equation (4) gives an illu~trationthat the oscillat,ion freqncncy can be thcorelically tuned for a wide raiige by cbanging t,lie value of control current. Huncver, it will not work
properly for a very small curreiit, since it is difficult. to keep
matching betwcen the values af the upper and lower cont.rol
currents when thcy are too srnall. In addition, the small
bids current will make the voltage s w i n g s l o w
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201

--Ch
- N -

Figure 3: Proposed voltage controlled ring oscillator.

oscillation frequency can be found as

vss

foac

Gn,
2NCc(l +G>jiR,i,)'

(7)

Equation (7) shows ahat the oscillation frequency depends

on the values of transconductance G,M rcsistauce Rv and
capacitance Cc. However, G,u and Cc: are device parameters and assumed to be constant. As a conclusion: the oscillation frcquency can be controllcd by- changing the valnc of
RI,. Theoretically, choosing a big valrio for Rv will eiiahle
the irnplcmentation of a ring oscillator with a low oscillation
frequency using small size deviccs and less stages.
~

Figure 1: Conventional voltage controlled ring oscillator.

VDU

Figure 4: Inverter circuit.

vss
Figure 2: Delay approximation.

--

3. PROPOSED CIRCUIT
3.1 Basic Circuit
The proposed circuit, scheme is showii in Fig.3. Here a variable resistor Rv is added at the irqnnt tcrminal of cach inverter. The invcrter itself is made from PMOS and NMOS
t,rnnsistors as is shown in Fig.4. The dehy of each stage T~
can he calculated from Fig.5. Since the MOS transistors in
each invcrter can l,c assurried as switches, it can be replaccc1
by a resistance 1/G,u as is shown i n Fig.5. If the transconductances G,VSand parasitic capacitances Ccs of Nh'IOS
and PMOS transistors are equal, the delay of each inverter
stage T~ thcn will be approximately
TP =

Cc(l

+ GnrRu)
Gnr

Figure 5: Delay approximation.

3.2 Circuit Implementation

The proposcd method is implemcnted in the circuit shown
in Fig.6. Here tlic variable rcsistance is implenierited using

PMOS and NMOS transistors. Both types are reqnired to

euable the full swing between pow-er supplies. The overall
circuit, is shown in Fig.7. Here thc resistances of the hlOS
transistors are controlled by their gate voltage. Choosing
a proper hlOS transistor sizes will guarantcc the matching
heween transistors.

(5)

For a very large R,v such that GniR, >> 1: the dclay mill
be determined by the time constant of RVCG regardless of
the value of Gdi. Assuming Rv = 0 will give

4. SIMULATION RESULTS
The siniulation is performcc1 using Icvcl 28, O . ( i p n CMOS
process parameters. Circuits used i n the simulation are
thrcc-stage voltage controllcd ring oscillators shown in Figs.8
and 9. Thc lV/L rarius of thc MOS transistors arc shown
in Table 1. The powcr supply VDDfur both circuits is 3V.

which is a d e l q for a simple invcrter stagc. Finally. the

202

VN
F i g u r e 6 : Circuit i m p l c m e n t a t i o n of t h e invertcr circuit.

F i g u r e 8: Conventional t h r e e s t a g e s voltage controlled ring oscillator.

Table 1: NMOS t r a n s i s t o r s W / L ratios

F i g u r e 7: Circuit implementation of t h e proposed
voltage controlled r i n g oscillator.

910.6
4.511.2

AI,

4.1 Transient Characteristics

Both transient sinidation results of the canventiuiial and
the proposcrl circuits are shown i n Fig.10. The oscillation
frcqnency far bot,h of them arc set to 370hIHa. The control
current IctT1of the conventioiial circuit, is 134pA while the
coutrol voltage I i ~ , i of t h e proposcd circuit is :I\'.

Next, Fig.11 shows t,he transient simulat,ion result of the proposed circnit when the control voltage is l\i. The oscillation
frequency is 6hIHz. The control current of the converitional
circuit is 1.41.5~iAfor the same oscillation frcqliency. Here
the proposed circuit has a faster voltage swing tiran the conventional one for both high and low oscillation frequency. In
case of fnsc = 6MHz. the rise/fd tirnc (10%
00% of voltage swing) for the conventional arid the proposcd circuits are
32.lns and 4.311s respectively. Here the rise/fdl tinre of the
proposed circuit is roughly 118 of thc conventional circuit
for oscillation frequency of 6hlllz.

5. CONCLUSIONS
A new design of ring oscillator based VCO is proposcd. The
proposed design allows iniplemcntatioii of a voltagc corn
trolled ring oscillator with widc tuning range and fast voltage swing. Sirnnlat,ion remits s h o x that thc rise/fall time
of the proposcd circuit is 118 of t,he conventional one fur
oscillation frquency of 6hlIIz. ' h e propused circuit also
achieves a tuning range from 40Hz to 380hIHz for control
voltage between 0.4V l o 3V. Furthermore, the i i i a ~ i u i ~ n i
oscillation frequency 01the proposed circuit depends on the
device sizes. Furt,Iiermorel the proposed circuit is applicable
for a lower supply voltage because of its simple structure.

Figure 13 shows t,hat the proposed circuit h

chsractertistic for control voltages less than 1V. This is bccause the MOST resistors are i n the.weak inversion region.
For coiitrul voltagcs bigger then I V , the MOST resistors are
in t,he lincar region and the oscillation frequency is increased
hy 20MHz for 0.1V increnicnt of control vultage. T h e cxpcrinrentnl chip is still uiiclcr development.

Figure 12 s l ~ o w sthe simulation result of the current dissipation of the proposed circuit for f O a c = G M H z . Here the
propused circuit dissipates a large cnrrent in the transitioii of
thc output, vohage afeacli inverter. As a result, the pmposcd
circuit has a faster voltagc swing than the conventional oiw.

6. REFERENCES

4.2 F-V Characteristic

[I] A.H;tjiiniri arid T.H.Lee. The Desrgn of Lour h'nise

O x i l l a t o m Kluwcr Academic Publishers, l9!J9.

Simulation result of the f-v characteristic of the proposed

voltagc controlled ring oscillator is shown in Fig.13. The
oscilktioo frcqueiicy for control voltagc of 0.4V and 3V are
40Ha and 3XOhIHz respectively, Here a frcquency tuning
rangc from tens of hertz to hundreds of megahertz is oht,ained. In addition irnplenrentation uf low frequency oscillator using sinall size devices is also pussihlr.

[ 2 ] A.Rczayee and I<.Martin. A three-stage coupled ring

oscillator with qnadraturc outputs. In Proceedings of
Int. Symp. o n Circuits and Systenis. IEEE, 2001.

13) D.A.Johns a d K h I a r t i n Analog Integrated

CircuitDesiyrr. John Wiley ami Sons; New York.,1997.

203

Vi,"

v,,,,I

1.

Figure 9: Proposed three stages voltage controllcd

ring oscillator.

Time [SI
Figure 12: Current dissipation( f,,,=GMHz).

I
3440 345" 346" 347" 348" 34% 350" 351" 352" 353" 3,

Time
Figure 10: Transient characteristic(f,,,=37OMHz).

0.5

Figure 13: F-V characteristic simulation results of

the proposed circuit.

Figure 11: Transient characteristic(f,,,=GMHz).

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