Abstract

A 1.1 MHz submicrowatt current mode relaxation oscillator with

temperature compensation is presented. In this oscillator the current
starving inverters are biased by using the current sources with
positive and negative temperature coefficients. It relaxes the
temperature variations. This oscillator is fabricated in a 0.35 um
CMOS process and its area is 0.103mm
2
. The power consumption is
0.859 uW, with a supply voltage of 1.8V, and the calculated figure of
merit (FOM) is 0.78 nW/KHz. The measured output relative frequency
variation is less than 3% per volt for the supply voltage of 1.2-2.4 volt
and (+-)0.5% for the temperature of -20C-80C. The average
temperature coefficient is 64.3 ppm/degree Celsius.














Introduction
In electronics a relaxation oscillator is a nonlinear electronic oscillator circuit
that produces a nonsinusoidal repetitive output signal, such as a triangle
wave or square wave. The circuit consists of a feedback loop containing a
switching device such as a transistor,comparator, relay,
[5]
op amp, or
a negative resistance device like a tunnel diode, that repetitively charges
a capacitor or inductor through a resistance until it reaches a threshold level,
then discharges it again.
[4][6]
The period of the oscillator depends on the time
constant of the capacitor or inductor circuit.
[2]
The active device switches
abruptly between charging and discharging modes, and thus produces a
discontinuously changing repetitive waveform.
[2][4]
This contrasts with the
other type of electronic oscillator, the harmonic or linear oscillator, which
uses an amplifier with feedback to excite resonant oscillations in a resonator,
producing a sine wave.
[7]
The difference between the two types is that in a
linear oscillator the circuit operates close to linearity, while in a relaxation
oscillator one of the components, the switching device, operates in an
extremely nonlinear fashion, in a saturated condition, during most of the
cycle.
[7]

The term relaxation oscillator is also applied to dynamic systems in many
diverse areas of science that produce nonlinear oscillations and can be
analyzed using the same mathematical model as electronic relaxation
oscillators. For example geothermal geysers, networks of firing nerve cells,
thermostat controlled heating systems,
[13]
coupled chemical reactions,
[9]
the
beating human heart, earthquakes,
[11]
the squeaking of chalk on a
blackboard,
[13]
the cyclic populations of predator and prey animals, and gene
activation systems
[9]
have been modeled as relaxation oscillators. Relaxation
oscillations are characterized by two alternating processes on different time
scales: a long relaxation period during which the system approaches
an equilibrium point, alternating with a short impulsive period in which the
equilibrium point shifts. The period of a relaxation oscillator is mainly
determined by the relaxation time constant.
[10]
Relaxation oscillations are a
type of limit cycle and are studied in nonlinear control theory.


The first relaxation oscillator circuit, the astable multivibrator, was invented
by Henri Abraham and Eugene Bloch usingvacuum tubes during World War
1. Balthasar van der Pol originated the term, first distinguished relaxation
oscillations from harmonic oscillations, and derived the first mathematical
model of a relaxation oscillator, the influential Van der Pol oscillator model, in
1920. Van der Pol borrowed the term relaxation from mechanics; the discharge
of the capacitor is analogous to the process of stress relaxation, the gradual
disappearance of deformation and return to equilibrium in ainelastic medium.
Relaxation oscillators are generally used to produce low frequency signals for
such applications as blinking lights, electronic beepers, horizontal deflection
circuits and time bases for CRT oscilloscopes, and clock signals in some
digital circuits. They are also used in voltage controlled
oscillators (VCOs),
[21]
inverters and switching power supplies, dual-slope
analog to digital converters, and in function generators to produce square and
triangle waves. Relaxation oscillators are widely used because they are easier
to design than linear oscillators, are easier to fabricate on integrated
circuit chips because they do not require inductors like LC
oscillators,
[21][22]
and can be tuned over a wide frequency range.
[22]
However
they have morephase noise
[21]
and poorer frequency stability than linear
oscillators.
[2][21]
Before the advent of microelectronics, simple relaxation
oscillators often used a negative resistance device with hysteresis such as
a thyratron tube, neon lamp, orunijunction transistor, however today they are
more often built with dedicated integrated circuits such as the 555 timer chip.
Relaxation oscillators can be divided into two classes
[12]

Unstable or sawtooth oscillator: In this type the energy storage
capacitor is charged slowly but discharged rapidly, essentially instantly,
by a short circuit through the switching device. The charging period
thus takes up virtually the entire period of the waveform. The voltage
across the capacitor is a sawtooth wave, while the current through the
switching device is a sequence of short pulses.
Astable multivibrator: In this type the capacitor is both charged and
discharged slowly through a resistor, so both the charge and discharge
periods contribute to the period of the oscillator. The voltage generated
by the capacitor is a triangle waveform, while the voltage from the
switching device is a square wave.

The relaxation oscillator , the ring oscillator and the wienbridge
oscillator are widely useful for on-chip oscillators. In a low-power
relaxation oscillator , the delay time between a voltage-mode
comparator and a Reset-Set flipflop is considered . Due to this, delay
time will be sensitive to the temperature variations , which degrade
the temperature coefficient of relaxation oscillator. To compensate for
this issue , a replica circuit is used to duplicate the delay time in. In
addition , the charging current source is doubled to cancel this effect.
Unfotunately, it is indispensible to increase the area and power. In a
current mode comparator and a clock buffer are adopted. Similarly,
their delay time will become an issue in a low power current-mode
relaxation oscillator.
In this brief , a low power current-mode relaxation oscillator
is presented. The transistor in the subthreshhold egion, the current-
mode comparator, and current starving inverters are used to reduce
the power consumption of the relaxation oscillator. The subthreshold
transistors and the resistors are used to realize the proportional-to-
absolute-temperature(PTAT) and complementary-to-absolute-
temperature(CTAT) current sources. The current starving inverters
are biased by the combined PTAT and CTAT current sources to relax
the temperature variations.




Current-mode relaxation oscillator