A 32kHz crystal oscillator leveraging voltage scaling in an ultra-low power 40NA real-time clock

In this paper, an ultra-low power consumption crystal oscillator embedded in an RTC module (ASIC and its crystal resonator) is presented. The technique leverages oscillation amplitude and loads capacitance scaling; it incorporates transistor level merging and a power injection mechanism in the resonator to reduce power consumption. The crystal oscillator starts up without additional complex circuitry. Measured power consumption is 10nW at 1V and operation is demonstrated from 0.6V to 5V under a regulator, while room temperature ranges from -40 to 85°C across four corner wafers.

Keywords

Oscillators, Crystals, Capacitance, Transistors, Impedance, Power demand, Resistors, CMOS, crystal oscillator, fast startup, low-voltage, ultra-low-power, RTC module, SoC, internet of things

Subject (DDC)

620 - Ingenieurwissenschaften und Maschinenbau

Project

Event

31st IEEE International System on Chip Conference (SOCC)

Exhibition start date

Exhibition end date

Conference start date

Conference end date

Date of the last check

ISBN

978-1-5386-1490-7

ISSN

Language

English

Created during FHNW affiliation

No

Strategic action fields FHNW

Publication status

Published

Review

Peer review of the complete publication

Open access category

Closed

License

Citation

Coustans, M., Krummenacher, F., Kayal, M., Rossi, L., Dellea, M., Godat, Y., Sierro, Y., & DallaPiazza, S. (2019). A 32kHz crystal oscillator leveraging voltage scaling in an ultra-low power 40NA real-time clock. In M. Stan, K. Bhatia, H. (. Li, M. Alioto, & R. Sridhar (Eds.), Proceedings 31st IEEE International System on Chip Conference (SOCC) (pp. 308–313). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/SOCC.2018.8618534

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