Honeywell International Inc.

Cypress Semiconductor Corporation

III Holdings 12, LLC

Xiaoxin Feng

James D Seefeldt

Weston Roper

James Douglas Seefeldt

Jeffrey Loukusa

James Seefeldt

The disclosure is directed to a simple, inexpensive circuit to extract the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) threshold voltage (Vt) from an integrated circuit. The threshold voltage may be used elsewhere in the circuit for a variety of purposes. One example use of threshold voltage is to sense the temperature of the circuit. The CMOS Vt extraction circuit of this disclosure includes a current mirror and an arrangement of well-matched transistors and resistors that takes advantage of the square law equation. The structure of the circuit may make it well suited to applications that benefit from low-power radiation hardened circuits.

Simple CMOS threshold voltage extraction circuit

A process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) compensation circuit and a method of continuously generating a delay measure are provided. The compensation circuit includes two delay lines, each delay line providing a delay output. The two delay lines may each include a number of delay elements, which in turn may include one or more current-starved inverters. The number of delay lines may differ between the two delay lines. The delay outputs are provided to a combining circuit that determines an offset pulse based on the two delay outputs and then averages the voltage of the offset pulse to determine a delay measure. The delay measure may be one or more currents or voltages indicating an amount of PVT compensation to apply to input or output signals of an application circuit, such as a memory-bus driver, dynamic random access memory (DRAM), a synchronous DRAM, a processor or other clocked circuit.

Apparatus and method for compensating for process, voltage, and temperature variation of the time delay of a digital delay line

A temperature-compensated-resistance (TCR) circuit, which may be part of an integrated circuit, is provided. The TCR circuit consists of two resistors and a diode. The two resistors are connected in parallel and the diode is connected in series with one of the resistors. The two parallel legs of the TCR circuit may be connected to a reference voltage source, such as a ground. No specialized devices, such as bipolar transistors, Zener or Schottky diodes, or specially-processed resistors, are required by the TCR circuit. The resistors and the diode of the TCR circuit may be chosen to adjust for temperature variations in the resistance values of the resistor, leading to a negative, zero, or positive temperature coefficient of resistance for the circuit. A phase-locked loop (PLL) circuit is described as an application of the TCR circuit.

Circuit for adjusting the temperature coefficient of a resistor

In general, this disclosure is directed to a duty cycle correction (DCC) circuit that adjusts a falling edge of a clock signal to achieve a desired duty cycle. In some examples, the DCC circuit may generate a pulse in response to a falling edge of an input clock signal, delay the pulse based on a control voltage, adjust the falling edge of the input clock signal based on the delayed pulse to produce an output clock signal, and adjust the control voltage based on the difference between a duty cycle of the output clock signal and a desired duty cycle. Since the DCC circuit adjusts the falling edge of the clock cycle to achieve a desired duty cycle, the DCC may be incorporated into existing PLL control loops that adjust the rising edge of a clock signal without interfering with the operation of such PLL control loops.

Automatic control of clock duty cycle

Embodiments of the present invention relate to a low voltage differential signal driver (LVDS) circuit which comprises a current source, logic controlled switches for controlling the driver's output, an electronic load circuit coupled across the circuit, and a common-mode resistor feedback circuit coupled across the circuit, in parallel with the RC load, for tuning the driver's impedance. The driver is enabled to operate without op-amps and achieves optimum performance at 1.8 v supply voltages.

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Shakopee, MN, United States of America

Xiaoxin Feng