A VCO in 65 nm technology for very accurate sensing applications

Abstract

In this paper a temperature sensor in 65 nm technology is presented. All blocks are implementable on chips as it was the goal from the beginning to have a "Sensor on a Chip" as outcome of the design. The general block diagram of the system shows that it can be used for any other purpose by changing the sensing part and making it a linear one. The sensor assumed to be usable for a control system and the output of a system is Frequency! It works at frequency range of 26 GHz to 31 GHz which represents a resolution of 50 MHz/°C. The range for temperature is 100 °C to 190 °C. For sure this range can be improved by using other sorts of sensing parts than what is used for this research. The main part of the circuit is a VCO which consumes 17 mW at the highest frequency and a phase noise of −106.8 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset.