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Title: An 802pW 93% Peak Efficiency Buck Converter with 5.5×106 Dynamic Range Featuring Fast DVFS and Asynchronous Load-Transient Control

Journal Article · · Proceedings of ESSCIRC (Online)
 [1];  [1];  [1]
  1. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA (United States)
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Here this paper presents a buck converter with sub-nW quiescent power, high efficiency, and a wide dynamic range for ultra-low-power (ULP) IoT SoCs. To optimize the SoC power consumption, the buck converter supports fast dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) and enables fast load-transient response (FLTR) through asynchronous control. In addition, the buck converter is fully self-contained with all features integrated on chip including a proposed adaptive deadtime controller. Fabricated in 65nm CMOS, measurement results show the buck converter has an 802pW quiescent power at 1.5V input voltage and a 93% peak efficiency. The measured dynamic range is from 0.5nW to 2.75mW, which is over 6 orders of magnitude. The measured voltage droop is 54mV for a 45nA-to-1mA load current step thanks to the asynchronous load-transient detector. The buck converter achieves the highest efficiency and widest dynamic range among all the state-of-the-art sub-nW switching voltage regulators, which makes it well suited for power management in ULP SoCs.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Energy Efficiency Office. Building Technologies Office
Grant/Contract Number:
EE0008225
OSTI ID:
1860365
Journal Information:
Proceedings of ESSCIRC (Online), Vol. 2021; Conference: IEEE 47. European Solid State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC) , Grenoble (France), 13-22 Sept 2021; ISSN 2643-1319
Publisher:
IEEECopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (7)

A 10-MHz Hysteretic-Controlled Buck Converter With Single On/Off Reference Tracking Using Turning-Point Prediction for DVFS Application journal November 2019
14.6 A 745pA Hybrid Asynchronous Binary-Searching and Synchronous Linear-Searching Digital LDO with 3.8×105 Dynamic Load Range, 99.99% Current Efficiency, and 2mV Output Voltage Ripple conference February 2019
A 6–140-nW 11 Hz–8.2-kHz DVFS RISC-V Microprocessor Using Scalable Dynamic Leakage-Suppression Logic journal August 2019
23.2 A 1.1nW energy harvesting system with 544pW quiescent power for next-generation implants conference February 2014
A 20-pW Discontinuous Switched-Capacitor Energy Harvester for Smart Sensor Applications journal April 2017
10.8 A Buck converter with 240pW quiescent power, 92% peak efficiency and a 2×106 dynamic range conference February 2017
A cm-Scale 2.4-GHz Wireless Energy Harvester With NanoWatt Boost Converter and Antenna-Rectifier Resonance for WiFi Powering of Sensor Nodes journal December 2018

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Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
buck converter
sub-nW quiescent power
wide dynamic range
high efficiency
fast DVFS
asynchronous control
fast load-transient response