Digital Low-Dropout Regulator With Voltage-Controlled Oscillator Based Control

A digital low-dropout (DLDO) regulator is described which is controlled by voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) based feedback loop. There are two VCOs in the control loop whose frequencies are controlled by the output voltage and reference level, respectively. By comparing the phase between the output clocks of the two VCOs and modulating the number of enabled power transistors and their
on
-times, the output voltage is regulated. The proposed VCO-based control is a hybrid of digital and analog control schemes because the number of enabled power transistors is controlled in discrete step while the
on
-time is modulated continuously. In order to improve the transient speed, transient detector is employed in the DLDO regulator. The DLDO regulator with the proposed VCO-based control has been implemented in a 65-nm CMOS process. The DLDO regulator can provide the output from 0.5 to 1.1 V from the input ranging from 0.9 to 1.2 V. The load transient time is smaller than 90 ns for both step-up and step-down changes of load current. The peak current efficiency is 99.3%.