Nxp B.v.

Nxp Usa, Inc.

Saurabh Goyal

Divya Tripathi

Sanjay Kumar Wadhwa

Krishna Thakur

Deependra Kumar Jain

Alvin Leng Sun Loke

Firas N Abughazaleh

Manish Kumar Upadhyay

Atul Kumar

A low current, adaptively-biased switched resistor digital-to-analog converter (RDAC) circuit, method and apparatus are provided with a coarse trim ladder and a fine trim ladder connected with a plurality of NFET switches to generate an output reference voltage from an input supply voltage, where the bulk semiconductor substrate regions for the NFET switches in at least the fine trim ladder are driven by a unity gain buffer which is connected in feedback to receive the output reference voltage and to generate a buffered reference voltage which is directly connected to bulk semiconductor regions of the NFET switches, thereby providing a low current, low circuit area solution with reduced leakage current and temperature variation.

RDAC ladder with adaptive biasing to reduce the reference variation across temperature

An integrated circuit (IC) includes one or more active transistors and multiple series-coupled dummy transistors. The dummy transistors are coupled between two active transistors and/or at the ends of each active transistor. When the dummy transistors are coupled between two active transistors, apart from two conductive regions that are coupled to two active transistors, each remaining conductive region of the dummy transistors is maintained in a floating state to control a leakage current between the two active transistors. Similarly, when the dummy transistors are coupled at an end of one active transistor, apart from one conductive region that is coupled to the active transistor, each remaining conductive region of the dummy transistors is maintained in the floating state to control a leakage current between the active transistor and the dummy transistors.

System for controlling leakage current in integrated circuits

An integrated circuit including a functional circuit, a tuning circuit, and a control circuit is provided. The functional and control circuits generate an output signal and a digital code, respectively. The tuning circuit tunes the functional circuit based on the digital code to control an attribute of the output signal. The digital code is iteratively adjusted such that the attribute of the output signal is maintained within a predefined range. When the digital code corresponds to a cliff value, the digital code for a subsequent iteration is adjusted by a non-unit offset value such that a difference between the attribute for the cliff value and for the subsequent digital code is within a tolerance limit. The digital code is indicative of coarse and fine parameters, and for each value of the coarse parameter, the cliff value corresponds to the lowest or highest value of the fine parameter.

System and method for controlling tuning in electronic circuitries

A bootstrap switch circuit includes a transistor-based switch controlled by a first gate signal and a leakage protection transistor controlled by a second gate signal configured to reduce gate induced drain leakage in the transistor-based switch A first gate driver is included that produces a first gate signal at its output so that the first gate signal turns on the transistor-based switch during a sampling mode and turns off the transistor-based switch during a hold mode. A second gate driver is included that produces a second gate signal at its output and to receive the output signal of the bootstrap switch circuit so that the second gate signal turns on the leakage protection transistor during the sampling mode and turns off the leakage protection transistor during the hold mode and the second gate signal is based upon the output signal of the bootstrap switch circuit.

Circuit to reduce gate induced drain leakage

A temperature sensor includes a sensing element and a load. Multiple different currents pass through the sensing element in a sequential manner. Based on each current that passes through the sensing element, the sensing element outputs a complementary-to-absolute-temperature (CTAT) voltage and another current. Further, the currents that pass through the sensing element and the currents that the sensing element output separately pass through the load and result in the generation of multiple load voltages across the load. A current density ratio of the temperature sensor is determined based on the load voltages generated across the load. Further, a temperature value indicative of a temperature sensed by the temperature sensor is generated based on the current density ratio and the CTAT voltages outputted by the sensing element based on the different currents that pass therethrough.

Temperature sensor

A level shifter includes a control circuit and a bias circuit. The control circuit receives a bias voltage, a first signal associated with a first voltage domain, and supply voltages associated with a second voltage domain, and outputs a second signal that is associated with the second voltage domain. The bias circuit generates the bias voltage that is indicative of the duty cycle of the second signal, and provides the bias voltage to the control circuit to control the duty cycle of the second signal. The duty cycle of the second signal is controlled such that a difference between a duty cycle of the first signal and an inverse of the duty cycle of the second signal is less than a tolerance limit.

Level shifter

A soft-start circuit for a voltage regulator includes a comparator and a delay circuit. The comparator compares an output voltage, that is generated by the voltage regulator, and a reference voltage to generate a comparison signal. Further, the delay circuit receives the reference voltage and a control signal that is outputted based on the comparison signal, and outputs and provides another reference voltage to the voltage regulator. During a start-up of the voltage regulator, the reference voltage outputted by the delay circuit is a delayed version of the reference voltage received by the delay circuit. Thus, the soft-start circuit mitigates an overshoot of the output voltage during the start-up. Further, on completion of the start-up, the reference voltage outputted by the delay circuit is equal to the reference voltage received by the delay circuit.

Soft-start circuit for voltage regulator

A level shifter includes a pull-down circuit, a pull-up circuit, a protection circuit, and an output generator. The pull-down circuit is configured to receive input voltages, and generate bias voltages. The input voltages are associated with a voltage domain. The pull-up circuit is configured to receive a supply voltage and generate control voltages. The protection circuit is configured to receive reference voltages, and control the generation of the bias voltages and the control voltages. The output generator is configured to receive at least one of the reference voltages, and at least one of the bias voltages and the control voltages, and generate output voltages that are able to reach minimum and maximum voltage levels of another voltage domain. Further, the output voltages remain unaffected by variations in process, voltage, and temperature.

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Sonipat, India

Saurabh Goyal