Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Comp. Ltd.

Mediatex Inc.

Jason Hsu

Ruey-Bin Sheen

Tsung-Hsien Tsai

A tuning array selection circuit, together with a decoder and a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), can be employed to overcome some disadvantages of previous methods of phase locked loops. For example, a VCO can include a coarse tuning array and a fine tuning array. A coarse tuning array can be used to tune a VCO to generate a signal within a wide frequency range. A fine tuning array can be used to tune a VCO to generate a signal within a narrow frequency range. In one embodiment, the narrow frequency range is within the wide frequency range. The tuning array selection circuit can coordinate selection of appropriate fine tuning devices and narrow tuning devices to reduce transition jitter and the risk of fail locking of phase locked loops.

Coarse-mover with sequential finer tuning step

A clock recovery circuit capable of automatically adjusting the frequency range of a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO). The clock recovery circuit includes a phase detector, a charge pump, a loop filter, a voltage-controlled oscillator, a frequency counter, and a frequency control unit. The phase detector receives an input signal, such as EFM clock, and a VCO clock and outputs a control signal according to phase differences between the EFM clock and the VCO clock. The charge pump controls the charge action according to the control signal. The loop filter is connected to the charge pump and outputs a voltage signal. The voltage-controlled oscillator receives the voltage signal from the loop filter and outputs the VCO clock. The frequency counter counts the frequency of the VCO clock and outputs an oscillation frequency. The frequency control unit receives the oscillation frequency, sets a frequency value according to the oscillation frequency, and outputs a control voltage to the voltage-controlled oscillator.

Growing community of inventors

Hsinchu, Taiwan

Jason Hsu