Dissertation
FULLY INTEGRATED VOLTAGE REGULATORS FOR ENERGY-EFFICIENT SYSTEM-ON-CHIP
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2016
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/111439
Abstract
Highly-integrated System-on-Chip (SoC) has become a core component of modern electronics and an enabler of many emerging applications. The massive level of integration in SoC, while allowing unprecedented functions and capabilities, has given rise to power and thermal issues that compromise performance and reliability. Several power management strategies have been developed to address the power and thermal issues, and they necessitate on-chip fully integrated voltage regulators (FIVR) that can achieve new levels of power efficiency, power density, and transient response. However, in contrast to an off-chip counterpart, an on-chip FIVR encounters unique design challenges due to area constraint and parasitic effects, and thus requires new circuit topologies and techniques to overcome these limitations.
This dissertation presents the designs of FIVRs that aim to enhance the effectiveness of power management strategies in SoC by achieving high power efficiency, high power density, and fast transient response. In particular, two FIVRs are described in details, including architecture and circuit design, analysis, simulation, and measurement. The first FIVR is a buck converter with a fourth-order LC low-pass filter. The characteristics of on-chip spiral inductors are carefully studied to show the superior performance of a fourth-order LC low-pass filter over a second-order counterpart in terms of ripple attenuation and power efficiency. The second FIVR is a Switched-Inductor-Capacitor (SIC) voltage regulator that features a hybrid topology possessing the characteristics of both inductor-based voltage regulators and capacitor-based voltage regulators. The hybrid topology alleviates the stress of on-chip inductors to improve power efficiency and power density. Both FIVRs are fabricated in a 65 nm standard CMOS process, and on-wafer measurement demonstrates their superior performance over existing designs in terms of power efficiency, power density, and transient response. Thus, both FIVRs present promising solutions for energy-efficient highly-integrated SoC.
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Details
- Title
- FULLY INTEGRATED VOLTAGE REGULATORS FOR ENERGY-EFFICIENT SYSTEM-ON-CHIP
- Creators
- Nghia Trong Tang
- Contributors
- Deukhyoun Heo (Advisor)Partha Pratim Pande (Committee Member)Dae Hyun Kim (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 69
- Identifiers
- 99900581431501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation