This application is related to U.S. application Ser. No. 11/845,939, of Prajit Nandi and Sridhar Yadala, entitled “Bottom Plate Regulated Charge Pump,” which is filed concurrently with the present application.
This invention pertains generally to the field of charge pumps and more particularly to a charge pump using a bottom plate regulation scheme.
Charge pumps use a switching process to provide a DC output voltage larger than its DC input voltage. In general, a charge pump will have a capacitor coupled to switches between an input and an output. During one clock half cycle, the charging half cycle, the capacitor couples in parallel to the input so as to charge up to the input voltage. During a second clock cycle, the transfer half cycle, the charged capacitor couples in series with the input voltage so as to provide an output voltage twice the level of the input voltage. This process is illustrated in
Typical charge pump designs, such as conventional Dickson-type pumps, are suited for supplying capacitive loads; however, the efficiency of such pumps drops dramatically when it is required to supply a DC current Load. One common charge pump application is as peripheral circuitry on flash memories for operations where there are such requirements from pumps. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for charge pumps that achieve higher efficiency when supplying DC loads.
Techniques of operating a charge pump are described. The charge pump is connectable to receive a clock signal and a regulating voltage and provide an output voltage. The charge pump can have one or multiple stages, each of the stages will include a capacitor having first (or “top”) and second (or “bottom”) plates. During a first (or “charging”) phase, the regulating voltage is used to regulate the potential of the bottom plate. During a second (or “boosting”) phase, the top plate is connected to supply the output for the stage and the bottom plate is connected to receive the stage's input. Each stage will also have a set of switching elements, allowing the capacitor to be alternately connected in the first and second phases. For the first stage, the input is derived from the clock signal, and for any subsequent stages, the input will be the output of the preceding stage. The last stage provides the output voltage of the pump.
Various aspects, advantages, features and embodiments of the present invention are included in the following description of exemplary examples thereof, which description should be taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. All patents, patent applications, articles, other publications, documents and things referenced herein are hereby incorporated herein by this reference in their entirety for all purposes. To the extent of any inconsistency or conflict in the definition or use of terms between any of the incorporated publications, documents or things and the present application, those of the present application shall prevail.
The various aspects and features of the present invention may be better understood by examining the following figures, in which:
a is a simplified circuit diagram of the charging half cycle in a generic charge pump.
b is a simplified circuit diagram of the transfer half cycle in a generic charge pump.
As noted in the Background section, many conventional charge pumps, such as those of the Dickerson type, are suited for supplying capacitive loads, but the efficiency of such pumps drops when they are required to supply a DC current load. Charge pumps are often in as peripheral devices in applications having such requirements, as in flash memories. The arrangement presented here uses a scheme that can achieve much higher efficiency when supplying DC loads than prior art techniques, such as the normal Vt Cancellation techniques are used to improve the efficiency. In particular, the following discussion describes a pump scheme that focuses on a bottom plate regulation scheme that provides higher efficiency and less ripple when compared to existing schemes.
The improvements described can be incorporated into various charge pump designs, both of the Dickson type mentioned in the Background section as well as more general designs.
More information on Dickenson type pumps, and charge pumps generally, can be found, for example, in “Charge Pump Circuit Design” by Pan and Samaddar, McGraw-Hill, 2006, or “Charge Pumps: An Overview”, Pylarinos and Rogers, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto, available at on the webpage “www.eecg.toronto.edu/˜kphang/ece1371/chargepumps.pdf”. Further information on various other charge pump aspects and designs can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,436,587; 6,370,075; 6,922,096; and 7,135,910; and applications Ser. No. 10/842,910 filed on May 10, 2004; Ser. No. 11/295,906 filed on Dec. 6, 2005; Ser. No. 11/303,387 filed on Dec. 16, 2005; Ser. No. 11/497,465 filed on Jul. 31, 2006; and Ser. No. 11/523,875 filed on Sep. 19, 2006.
Vref is a fixed reference value, such as provided by band-gap generator (not shown) with a voltage of, say, 1.2 volts. Clock_High is a clock (not shown) input to the Pump 201. The “1” voltage level of Clock_High (φ) should preferably be high enough to minimize the drop across the switches used for charge transfer.
To provide context for the various aspects described here, some further discussion of the prior art is first given with respect to
The stage 301 receives the level to be boosted is input at the Boost input. This typically will be the high clock level Vclk for the first stage and the output of the preceding stage for subsequent stages. Vout is the boosted voltage output from the stage, which is then input to the subsequent stage or, for the last stage, the output of the pump. Under the typical prior art arrangement, the voltage level Vreg from the regulator 203 (
The pump stage 301 also receives the clock signal (φ), its inverse (φ′), or both, which are supplied to control the switches SW1311, SW2313, SW3315, and SW 317 to control these various connections, with SW1311 and SW3315 being closed when the clock signal is high (corresponding to the charging phase) and SW2313 and SW4317 being closed when the clock signal is low (boosting phase) in the arrangement of
Under the arrangement of
In the charging phase, node A is connected through closed switch 411 to the external voltage source 421. Node B is connected though closed switch 415 to Vss, with the resistance Rreg 405 interposed in between. The resistance value Rreg is controller by the regulator voltage Vreg, with the transistor 405 of
In the boosting phase on the right of
Referring back to
Ploss1(power loss in parasitics)=[CparA*(Vout−Vext)2+CparB*(Vclk−Vx)2]*f. (1)
In the conventional architecture of
Ploss2(power loss in parasitics)=[CparA*(Vout−Vreg)2+CparB*(Vclk)2]*f, (2)
where in both of equations (1) and (2), f is the frequency of pump operation. As Vext is the external power supply level, it will generally be the highest available supply voltage and Vreg will be derived from it, so that:
Vreg<Vext. (3)
Additionally, for the potential at node B, Vx,
Vx>0. (4)
Applying equations 3 and 4 in equations 1 and 2, it follows that:
Ploss1<Ploss2.
Hence, the proposed pump is more efficient than conventional pumps having top plate regulation scheme. Although derived for just a single stage to simply the discussion, this can similarly be shown to be true for pumps having more than one stage.
Referring again to the charging phase of
As described, the suggested architecture has a number of difference from, and improvements over, the prior art. Rather than using the regulator voltage Vreg for the top plate, the highest available voltage given by the user, Vext, is used for the top plate and a boosted clock is preferably used to minimize switch resistance and effect the realization of charging the top plates of the capacitors to Vext. The bottom plate of the capacitor elements is regulated to a value higher than VSS, going only to VSS when the pump is ramping-up or recovering. In this way, the steady state oscillations seen at the capacitor nodes are minimized; thus, charge loss in the parasitic at these nodes is minimized and higher efficiency is obtained (e.g., 50% more efficient than typical existing schemes).
By increasing efficiency in this way, the “I2R” power losses in the regulator, switches, and interconnect parasitic resistances are also minimized. This allows for the pump to be designed in lesser area. Further, the use of continuous regulation in the charging phase, and not in the boosting phase, reduces the pump impedance and makes it stronger. Additionally, as discussed, the use of bottom plate based regulation results in low ripple and better ramp-up and recovery times. The bottom plate regulation scheme described can be applied to any of the various pump architectures, such as those given in the various references cited above.
Although the invention has been described with reference to particular embodiments, the description is only an example of the invention's application and should not be taken as a limitation. Consequently, various adaptations and combinations of features of the embodiments disclosed are within the scope of the invention as encompassed by the following claims.
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