The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 01, 2000
Filed:
Mar. 11, 1999
Dar-Chang Juang, Hsinchu, TW;
De-Sheng Chen, Hsinchu, TW;
Industrial Technology Research Institute, Chutung, TW;
Abstract
A CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) high-frequency ring oscillator is provided for generating an output frequency in response to a control voltage in a wide bandwidth. The ring oscillator is of the type including a plurality of cascaded delay circuits, such as CMOS CSL (common-sense logic) inverters. The ring oscillator is characterized by the additional incorporation of each of the CMOS CSL inverters with either a positive-feedback gate structure or a positive-feedback drain structure so as to improve the output-to-output characteristics of the ring oscillator. More specifically, the ring oscillator is still operable to output an oscillating signal even though the control voltage is reduced to below a certain level, at which point the gain is still larger than 1. The ring oscillator is therefore more advantageous than the prior art both in gain and output-to-output characteristics and is operable over a wide variety of output frequencies, particularly in the low-frequency regions.