An Ultra-Low-Voltage Bias-Current-Free Fractional-N Hybrid PLL With Voltage-Mode Phase Detection and Interpolation

This article presents an ultra-low voltage (ULV) fractional-N hybrid phase-locked loop (PLL) without requiring bias current. A time-interleaved flip-flop phase detector (TI-FFPD) with duty-cycle-based phase detection is employed to achieve high linearity and low reference spur. A passive-intensive voltage-mode phase interpolator (VPI) with a supply-immune voltage scaling topology is proposed for $\Delta \Sigma $ quantization noise (Q-noise) reduction without gain or linearity calibration. A hybrid PLL (HPLL) that consists of a pseudo-differential analog proportional path and a digital integral path is implemented in 28-nm CMOS. The HPLL exhibits 607-fsrms jitter and −59-dBc in-band fractional spur at 2.42-GHz output and consumes 0.78-mW power from a 0.5-V supply, achieving the best figure of merit (FoMJIT) of −245.4 dB among low-voltage ( ${V_{\mathrm {DD}}}~{\lt }~0.8$ V) fractional-N PLLs.