Traveling-wave ring oscillator — a new architecture for a transmission line based oscillator

The paper presents a novel oscillator architecture based on a current starved ring oscillator and ring-connected transmission lines. Oscillator and transmission line rings are specifically coupled to obtain frequency stabilization due to synchronous interaction between the oscillator operation and a wave traveling in the transmission line rings. The proposed architecture employs a specific connection of transmission lines and outlines its advantages compared to a rotary traveling-wave oscillator. The proposed architecture exhibits scalability and can be implemented both stand alone and integrated on-chip. This novel concept was verified in simulations.