Transactions Briefs

A CMOS PWM Transceiver Using Self-Referenced Edge Detection

Kiichi Niitsu, Yusuke Osawa, Naohiro Harigai, Daiki Hirabayashi, Osamu Kobayashi,
Takahiro J. Yamaguchi, and Haruo Kobayashi
Abstract— A CMOS pulsewidth modulation (PWM) transceiver circuit
that exploits the self-referenced edge detection technique is presented.
By comparing the rising edge that is self-delayed by about 0.5 T and the
modulated falling edge in one carrier clock cycle, area-efficient and
highrobustness (against timing fluctuations) edge detection enabling PWM
communication is achieved without requiring elaborate phase-locked
loops. Since the proposed self-referenced edge detection circuit has the
capability of timing error measurement while changing the length of selfdelay
element, adaptive data-rate optimization and delay-line calibration
are realized. The measured results with a 65-nm CMOS prototype
demonstrate a 2-bit PWM communication, high data rate (3.2 Gb/s), and
high reliability (BER > 10−12) with small area occupation (540 µm2).
For reliability improvement, error check and correction associated with
intercycle edge detection is introduced and its effectiveness is verified by
1-bit PWM measurement.
Index Terms— CMOS, jitter, pulsewidth modulation (PWM),
self-referenced, transceiver.
I. INTRODUCTION
The requirement of decreased power supply voltage for CMOS
device scaling motivates us to develop time-domain circuits. To
develop time-domain circuits, the pulsewidth modulation (PWM)
scheme is a promising approach and widely used for many applications, such as
wireline transceivers [1]–[3], CMOS imagers [4],
and biosensor array [5]. However, conventional PWM transceiver
design [1]–[3] requires large-area and power-hungry phase-locked
loops (PLLs) for multiphase sampling clock generation.
This brief describes the design of an area-efficient and highly
robust PWM transceiver using the newly proposed self-referenced
edge detection. The proposed PWM transceiver exploits a timing
comparison between the rising edge that is self-delayed by about
0.5T and the data-modulated falling edge in one carrier clock cycle,
and this mechanism is introduced. Adaptive data-rate optimization
and error check and correction (ECC) technique are also introduced.
This brief is organized as follows. The proposed PWM transceiver using self-
referenced edge detection is introduced in
Manuscript received October 15, 2013; revised February 26, 2014; accepted
April 8, 2014. Date of publication May 29, 2014; date of current version
May 20, 2015. This work was supported in part by Japan Science and
Technology, in part by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, in part
by Starc and VLSI Design and Education Center, in part by the Grant-in-Aid
for Young Scientist (B) under Grant 24760266, in part by the Grant-in-Aid
for Scientific Research (S) under Grant 20226009 and Grant 25220906,
and in part by the University of Tokyo in collaboration with Cadence Design
Systems, Inc.
K. Niitsu is with the Department of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science,
Graduated School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Nagoya
464-8603, Japan (e-mail: niitsu@nuee.nagoya-u.ac.jp).
Y. Osawa, N. Harigai, D. Hirabayashi, and H. Kobayashi are with the
Division of Electronics and Informatics, Faculty of Science and Technology,
Gunma University, Kiryu 376-8515, Japan (e-mail: t09306014@gunma-u.
ac.jp; t12801645@gunma-u.ac.jp; k_haruo@el.gunma-u.ac.jp).
O. Kobayashi is with STARC, Yokohama 222-0033, Japan.
T. J. Yamaguchi is with Advantest Laboratories Ltd., Sendai 989-3124,
Japan (e-mail: takahiro.yamaguchi@jp.advantest.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TVLSI.2014.2321393

Fig. 3. Circuit implementation of the proposed PWM transceiver architecture

in 2-bit PWM.
Section II. Section III introduces adaptive data-rate optimization.
Section IV presents ECC. The test chip design and the measurement
results are summarized in Sections V and VI. Discussion is described
in Section VII. Section VIII concludes this brief.
II. PWM TRANSCEIVER USING SELF-REFERENCED
EDGE DETECTION
Figs. 1 and 2 show a conceptual diagram of the conventional
and proposed receiver design for a 2-bit PWM. A conventional
PWM receiver [1] exploits a PLL for generating time-shifted sampling clocks. Our
newly proposed PWM receiver using a selfreferenced edge detector employs latches as
timing comparators and
a thermometer-binary decoder. The proposed self-referenced edge
detection utilizes the self-delayed rising edge instead of the PLLs
sampling clock. By comparing this self-delayed rising edge and the
data-modulated falling edge in one carrier clock cycle, edge detection
can be realized. The proposed structure removes the elaborate PLL;
hence, high area efficiency is obtained.
Fig. 3 shows the schematic diagram of the proposed transceiver
architecture. The transmitter consists of a duty controller, four delay
elements with length of multiples of modulation factor, T , selector
controlled by the PWM modulator, and OR logic. The receiver
consists of three delay elements with various lengths about a half of
the clock period, 0.5T , latches, and a thermometer-binary decoder.
The outputs of the three latches are thermometer codes that are
converted to binary code by the thermometer-binary decoder.
III. ADAPTIVE DATA-RATE OPTIMIZATION
Fig. 4 shows a conceptual diagram of the adaptive data-rate
optimization and delay-line calibration. The receiver has the same
configuration as the reference-clock-free timing jitter measurement
circuit using self-referenced clock with nT delay [6]. In [6], nT-delay
generates two uncorrelated edges. By comparing two uncorrelated
edges, √2-times timing jitter can be obtained. Thus, timing error
measurement is realized by only changing the length of the delay.
Based on the obtained timing error information of the carrier clock,
modulation factor, T , and the carrier clock frequency can be optimized. Since the
timing error of the carrier clock primarily determines
the bit error rate, smaller jitter enables both higher modulation and
a higher carrier clock frequency, which results in a higher data rate.
Moreover, the delay lines for communication can be calibrated while
processing the timing error measurement.
IV. ERROR CHECK AND CORRECTION
This section introduces the ECC circuit for improving the performance of the
proposed PWM transceiver using self-referenced

edge detection. Fig. 5 shows the conceptual image of the proposed

ECC technique. The auxiliary receiver detects the intercycle time
difference of the adjacent falling edges, as shown in Fig. 5. Delay
length design of the auxiliary receiver can be determined by the
autocorrelation function of the jitter of the carrier clock [7], [8].
In typical situation, correlation decreases as the number of cycles
between the preceding and succeeding edges increases. Thus, a larger
number of interreference cycles are expected to be effective for
error detection. However, to be large number of interreference cycles
causes area penalty. Therefore, we have to consider the tradeoff
between ECC effectiveness and area overhead in designing the ECC
circuits.
Fig. 6 shows the conceptual image of the ECC function in 1-bit
PWM that is enabled by comparing the received data from the main
receiver and that from the auxiliary receiver. Since the implemented
ECC uses only 1T -delayed edges for error correction, successive
errors cannot be recovered. As stated above, instead of using
1T -delay as in Fig. 6, 0.5T -delay (comparing with the latter rising
edges instead of the earlier rising edges) or a longer delay is possible.
Thus, the proposed technique is flexible and can be optimized under
the characteristic of timing error.
Fig. 7 shows the schematic diagram of the ECC circuit for 1-bit
PWM. The ECC circuit consists of latches and an error detector.
ECC utilizes the successive received data from the main receivers,
D1 and D2, and data from the auxiliary receivers, A+ and A−.
An error code is generated when a discrepancy between the received
data from the main and auxiliary receiver occurs, and the original
RX bit is inverted.

V. TEST CHIP DESIGN AND MEASUREMENT SETUP

To verify the effectiveness of the proposed technique, a test chip
was fabricated using 65-nm CMOS technology, as shown in Fig. 8.
The footprints of the circuits are 20 μm × 27 μm (2-bit PWM,
T = 15 ps, without ECC) and 20 μm × 39 μm (1-bit PWM,
T = 30 ps, with ECC). To confirm the multibit operation and
ECC feasibility separately, two types are implemented and tested.
The common offset of the inverter-based delay line was shared
by all delay lines for compact layout. An on-chip interconnect
with a length of 3.2 μm was implemented as a communication
channel. The target application includes mobile application [3] and
large-scale sensor array [4], [5], where communication channel is
short.
The input carrier clock and TX data were fed into the circuit
by a BERTS (Agilent 81250, timing jitter is 1.6-ps RMS). Input
and output signals were captured with a sampling oscilloscope
(Tektronix DSA71254B).
VI. MEASUREMENT RESULT
Fig. 9 shows the measured waveform of the input and output signal.
A carrier clock and shifted 2-bit pseudorandom bit sequence (PRBS)
were fed into the test chip. Data communication was successfully
verified with data rate of 3.2 Gb/s (=1.6 Gb/s/bit × 2 bit). The data
rate is determined by the measurement setup. The maximum data
rate of BERTS (Agilent 81250) is 3.2 Gb/s. High reliability with a
BER < 10−12 was also verified with a BERTS.
Fig. 10. Measured waveform of the carrier clock, transmitted and received
data, and error code under nonsuccessive 1-bit error. ECC operation was
successfully verified. Data rate is 3.2 Gb/s, and carrier clock frequency is
3.2 GHz.
Fig. 11. Measured waveform of the carrier clock, transmitted and received
data, and error code under 2-bit successive error. Toggle pattern is utilized
for verification. The proposed ECC cannot recover 2-bit successive error as
designed. Data rate is 3.2 Gb/s, and carrier clock frequency is 3.2 GHz.
Fig. 10 shows the measured waveform for verifying ECC operation.
To create a nonsuccessive 1-bit error situation, a carrier clock with
large timing jitter of 1/16 probability was utilized. Large timing jitter
was generated by changing the duty cycle. The ECC successfully
recovered the received data, and generated an error code with a
probability of 1/16.
Fig. 11 shows the measured waveform for demonstrating the
limitations of ECC operation. To create a 2-bit successive error
situation, a carrier clock with a large timing jitter of 2/16 probability
(two successive times every 16 cycles) was utilized. The ECC could
not recover the received data as designed.
Performance summary is shown in Table I. Since the proposed
PWM transceiver does not require PLL nor delay locked loop (DLL)
circuits, the circuit area can be minimized. Even if considering
technology scaling from 0.18-μm CMOS to 65-nm CMOS, the
proposed circuit is competitive from the viewpoint of area efficiency.
The BER measurement has been performed by carrier clock with
lower jitter than these in other related works. However, the state-ofthe-art PLLs
[9], [10] can generate subpicosecond jitter clock. Thus,
by associating with the low-jitter clock generator in TX, the proposed
technique can be feasible without PLL or DLL in RX.
VII. DISCUSSION
A. Another Topology of the Proposed CMOS PWM Transceiver
Using Self-Referenced Edge Detection
This section introduces another topology of the proposed CMOS
PWM transceiver using self-reference edge detection. Instead of

using both rising and falling edges, another topology utilizes only
rising or falling edges. Since this topology can remove the limitation
of implementation, it expands the application of the proposed
technique.
Fig. 12 shows the conceptual image of another topology of the
proposed CMOS PWM transceiver using self-referenced edge detection. It is well
known that the timing jitter can be expressed as the
accumulation of the period jitter [11]. By applying this characteristic
to the PWM, PWM edges can be expressed by the accumulation of
the period. For instance, when the previous bit is 0 and the period,
M−M+, is 00, the current data become 1, as shown in the bottom
part of Fig. 12.
B. Compatibility With Spread Spectrum Clocking
Since the proposed technique detects edge within the same clock
cycle, it has good compatibility with the spread spectrum clocking
technique [12]. The conventional techniques with PLL or DLL
[1]–[3] have difficulty in recovering clock signal when the both
rising and falling edges are modulated. On the other hand, the
proposed technique can achieve edge detection because it utilizes
intracycle clock edges. Therefore, the proposed technique has better
compatibility with the spread spectrum clocking technique by
comparing with the conventional techniques.
C. Dynamic Range of the Proposed Transceiver
This section provides analysis on dynamic range of the proposed
CMOS PWM transceiver using self-referenced edge detection. In this
brief, we implemented 3.2-μm on-chip interconnect as a communication channel and
employed 1.6-ps jitter carrier clock to check
the function of the proposed transceiver. By measuring the test
chip fabricated in 65-nm CMOS technology, the proposed technique
found to be feasible under 3.2-μm on-chip interconnect with 1.6-ps
carrier clock. However, more realistic communication channel and
carrier clock signal have to be considered for making the proposed
transceiver practical for commercial applications.
At first, dynamic range for length of communication channel is
analyzed. The dynamic range for jitter measurement is determined
by combination of T and T in Fig. 4. To measure the timing
jitter for guaranteeing BER of less than 10−12, probability density
function in 3σ of the timing jitter has to be measured [6]. Thus,
2T (jitter measurement range is from −2T to 2T ) must be
designed to be greater than 3σ . The literature of the communication
channel model [13] indicates that the additional jitter is approximately
8 ps when considering 12-in interconnect. Thus, jitter is increased
from 1.6 to 9.6 ps by enlarging interconnect. Since BER of less
than 10−12 requires that T must be greater than approximately
1.5σ , T must be 14.4 ps. In the 2-bit PWM, maximum clock
frequency is determined by inverse of 8T . Therefore, the proposed technique can
maintain the data rate of 8.68 Gb/s for guaranteeing BER of less than 10−12 even
when considering 12-in
interconnect.
Second, the dynamic range for data rate is analyzed. The proposed
technique exploits the fixed T , as shown in Fig. 3. The test
chip embedded T of 15 ps for 2-bit PWM. The maximum clock
frequency is 8.33 GHz, and the maximum data rate is 16.66 Gb/s.
In this brief, we have implemented the fixed T and T to check
the function of the proposed technique. However, if the redundancy
in T and T in Fig. 4 is implemented, the proposed technique can
apply to various data rate and communication channel. For example,
when implementing M kinds of the T , M kinds of the data rate can
be feasible.
VIII. CONCLUSION
A CMOS PWM transceiver circuit using the self-referenced
edge detection technique has been demonstrated for the first time.
By comparing the self-delayed rising edge and modulated falling
edge, edge detection was realized. This edge detection enables
area-efficient and high-robustness for PWM communication without
exploiting PLLs. The data-rate optimization and ECC with interstage edge detection
was introduced. Test chip was fabricated in
65-nm CMOS. The measured results have demonstrated 2-bit PWM
communication, high data rate (3.2 Gb/s), and high reliability
(BER < 10−12) with small area occupation (540 μm2).