A 200 μA Duty-Cycled PLL for Wireless Sensor Nodes in 65 nm CMOS

The design of a duty-cycled PLL (DCPLL) capable of burst mode operation is presented. The proposed DCPLL is a moderately accurate low-power high-frequency synthesizer suitable for use in nodes for wireless sensor networks (WSN). Thanks to a dual loop configuration, the PLL's total frequency error, once in lock, is less than 0.25% from 300 MHz to 1.2 GHz. It employs a fast start-up DCO which enables its operation at duty-cycles as low as 10%. Fabricated in a baseline 65 nm CMOS technology, the DCPLL circuit occupies 0.19 x 0.15 mm
²
and draws 200 μA from a 1.3 V supply when generating bursts of 1 GHz signal with a 10% duty-cycle.