A Wide-Tuning PLL With SET-Tolerant Quadrature Ring VCO for Serial Rapid I/O

This article presents a single-event transient (SET) tolerant phase-locked loops (PLLs) with a wide-tuning-range source-feedforward ring voltage-controlled oscillator (SFRVCO), suitable for serial rapid I/O (SRIO). The analysis of impulse sensitivity function (ISF) shows that the proposed oscillator has lower phase noise, and its tuning range reaches 0.9–6.6 GHz under the control of adjustable current source with high power supply rejection ratio (PSRR), which also exhibits better SET tolerance. Implemented in a 28-nm CMOS process, the proposed SFRVCO achieves a phase noise of −96.7 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset from a 2.5-GHz carrier, occupying a core area of 0.0008 mm2. Laser experiments indicate an irradiation threshold of 600 pJ.