Accurate Performance Evaluation of Jitter-Power FOM for Multiplying Delay-Locked Loop

An accurate performance evaluation of jitter-power figure-of-merit (FOM) for multiplying delay-locked loop (MDLL) is presented. For a typical MDLL employing a single-ended multiplying-delay ring voltage-controlled oscillator (MDVCO), it can be tuned via the capacitive loads to uphold a constant normalized phase noise (PN) across different frequencies for better jitter-power performance. Linear approximation and z-domain PN model are utilized to simplify the analysis with excellent agreement between the time-domain simulation and z-domain approximation. The influences of the asymmetric waveform, flicker noise corner, frequency error and reference noise are also discussed and then ignored based on the reasonable approximation. Under a given process, reference clock frequency and supply voltage, the ideal FOM can be derived theoretically. Based on these insights, the predicted FOM can be the benchmark metric in the design of MDLL for the possible best jitter-power performance.