Patents Examined by David Mis
  • Patent number: 7755439
    Abstract: A PLL circuit for two point modulation includes a first loop filter, a second loop filter, a plurality of switching devices, and a calibration module. The first loop filter filters an output voltage of a charge pump during a gain calibration operation. The second loop filter filters the output voltage of the charge pump during a normal operation. The first loop filter has a bandwidth wider than that of the second loop filter to perform a fast calibration by reducing a lock time. The operation of the first loop filter, the operation of the second loop filter, and the opening of the first loop filter are determined by the switching operations of the switching devices. The calibration module adjusts a gain of analog modulation data based on a frequency error accumulated in the first loop filter after the first loop filter is open during the gain calibration operation.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 5, 2008
    Date of Patent: July 13, 2010
    Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Hwa Yeal Yu, Dong Jin Keum
  • Patent number: 7755436
    Abstract: Provided is a PLL apparatus outputting a frequency signal from a voltage-controlled oscillation unit in synchronization with an external reference frequency signal, in which the fluctuation of the frequency is reduced even when the external reference signal has a trouble For solving the problem, as a result of monitoring the signal level of the external reference frequency signal, when its signal level falls within a set range, data regarding a phase difference created by a phase difference data creating means is used for the PLL control, but when the signal level does not fall within the set range, it is recognized that the supply of the signal has been stopped or the supplied signal has abnormality and the data regarding the phase difference stored in a storage unit, for example, the stored latest data or the pre-created data is used instead for the PLL control.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 20, 2007
    Date of Patent: July 13, 2010
    Assignee: Nihon Dempa Kogyo Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Naoki Onishi, Shunichi Wakamatsu, Tsuyoshi Shiobara
  • Patent number: 7750742
    Abstract: An All Digital PLL (ADPLL) and oscillation signal generation method using the ADPLL is provided for generating a spur-free oscillation signal by improving the frequency resolution of the ADPLL.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 4, 2008
    Date of Patent: July 6, 2010
    Assignee: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
    Inventors: Seonghwan Cho, Wookon Son
  • Patent number: 7750746
    Abstract: An oscillator device includes an oscillation system including an oscillator and a resilient supporting member, a driving member configured to supply a driving force to the oscillation system based on a driving signal, and a driving frequency control unit configured to control a driving frequency of a driving signal to be outputted to the driving member, wherein, when an oscillation frequency of the oscillator is to be changed from a current oscillation frequency to a target oscillation frequency, the driving frequency control unit temporarily outputs, to the driving member, a driving signal having a driving frequency which is made different from the target oscillation frequency, being changed from the current driving frequency and beyond the target oscillation frequency, thereby to cause the driving member to drive the oscillation system.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 30, 2009
    Date of Patent: July 6, 2010
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Kazufumi Onuma
  • Patent number: 7746177
    Abstract: Self-biased bipolar ring-oscillator phase-locked loops with a wide tuning range are disclosed. In a particular example, an apparatus to provide a phase-locked loop is described, comprising a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) to provide an output clock signal having a frequency, a quantizer, a phase-frequency detector to generate an adjustment signal, and a charge pump to modify the control voltage. The example VCO includes several ring-oscillator stages, where each ring-oscillator stage includes several gain stages to provide several output currents based on a comparison of a control voltage and several corresponding threshold voltages. The example quantizer includes several comparators to generate digital signals based on the output currents. The example charge pump modifies the control voltage based on the digital signals and the adjustment signal, and includes several switching elements to increase or decrease current to the charge pump based on the digital signals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 27, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 29, 2010
    Assignee: Texas Instruments Incorporated
    Inventors: Zhiheng Cao, Robert Floyd Payne
  • Patent number: 7746178
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a digital offset phase-locked loop (DOPLL), which may have advantages of size, simplicity, performance, design portability, or any combination thereof, compared to analog-based phase-locked loops (PLLs). The DOPLL may include a digital controlled oscillator (DCO), which provides a controllable frequency output signal based on a digital control signal, a radio frequency (RF) mixer circuit, which provides a reduced-frequency feedback signal based on the controllable frequency output signal without reducing loop gain, a time-to-digital converter (TDC), which provides a digital feedback signal that is a time representation of the reduced-frequency feedback signal, and digital PLL circuitry, which provides the digital control signal based on the digital feedback signal and a digital setpoint signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 22, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 29, 2010
    Assignee: RF Micro Devices, Inc.
    Inventors: Scott Robert Humphreys, Stephen T. Janesch
  • Patent number: 7746187
    Abstract: A self-calibrating modulator apparatus includes a modulator having a controlled oscillator and an oscillator gain calibration circuit. The oscillator gain calibration circuit includes an oscillator gain coefficient calculator configured to calculate a plurality of frequency dependent oscillator gain coefficients from results of measurements taken at the output of the controlled oscillator in response to a test pattern signal representing a plurality of different reference frequencies. The plurality of frequency dependent gain coefficients determined from the calibration process are stored in a look up table (LUT), where they are made available after the calibration process ends to scale a modulation signal applied to the modulator. By scaling the modulation signal prior to it being applied to the control input of the controlled oscillator, the nonlinear response of the controlled oscillator is countered and the modulation accuracy of the modulator is thereby improved.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 2, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 29, 2010
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventors: Wayne S. Lee, Akira Kato, Toru Matsuura
  • Patent number: 7741928
    Abstract: Circuits and methods for frequency modulation (FM) using a digital frequency-locked loop (DFLL). A digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) generates and adjusts a frequency of a modulated signal based on a digital tuning word. A DFLL control logic circuit receives a feedback of the modulated signal and generates a carrier signal word. A sigma delta modulator circuit receives an input signal and applies dithering to produce a dithered input signal word. An adder circuit receives and sums the dithered input signal word and the carrier signal word to produce the digital tuning word. The DFLL control logic circuit adjusts the carrier signal word to lock a carrier frequency of the modulated signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 8, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 22, 2010
    Assignee: Marvell International Ltd.
    Inventors: David Cousinard, Philippe Mosch, Lydi Smaini, Randy Tsang, Cao-Thong Tu, Miljan Vuletic
  • Patent number: 7741917
    Abstract: According to an embodiment of a time to digital converter, the time difference between a signal of interest and a reference signal is measured by operating a digitally controlled oscillator at a first frequency during a first portion of the reference signal period and changing the operating frequency from the first frequency to a second frequency during the reference signal period as a function of the time difference between the signal of interest and the reference signal. The time to digital converter continuously counts how many signal transitions occur at an output of the digitally controlled oscillator during the reference signal period. The time difference between the signal of interest and the reference signal is estimated based on the number of signal transitions counted during the reference signal period.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 7, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 22, 2010
    Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ)
    Inventor: Staffan Ek
  • Patent number: 7741918
    Abstract: A frequency synthesizer is described. In particular, the frequency synthesizer includes a modulator circuit for producing a signal of modulated frequency. The frequency synthesizer includes an accumulator for summing a plurality of errors in the modulator circuit. An error sum value is generated. More particularly, the accumulator increases the rate of sign change of the plurality of errors. An error signal modulator is coupled to the accumulator and modulates an index that is associated with a current error based on the error sum value. The index that is modulated is used for selecting a feedback loop divider count value used for dividing a frequency of the signal. As a result, the error noise around a target signal shows an increased sign change of error, which moves the error noise to higher frequencies. This improves EMI performance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 30, 2006
    Date of Patent: June 22, 2010
    Assignee: Cypress Semiconductor Corporation
    Inventor: Shuliang Li
  • Patent number: 7741927
    Abstract: The PWM control circuit is provided. The PWM control circuit includes: a PWM control signal generator that generates a PWM period signal defining a period of a PWM signal and a PWM resolution signal specifying a resolution in one period of the PWM period signal; and a PWM unit that generates the PWM signal based on the PWM period signal and the PWM resolution signal, wherein the PWM control signal generator changes a frequency of the PWM resolution signal while keeping a frequency of the PWM period signal unchanged.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 29, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 22, 2010
    Assignee: Seiko Epson Corporation
    Inventor: Kesatoshi Takeuchi
  • Patent number: 7741922
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a switch, a negative resistance cell, and a differential voltage controlled oscillator using the same. The present invention includes a first signal line provided in a first direction, a second signal line provided in parallel with the first signal line, and first to fourth gate electrodes, first to third source electrodes, and first to fourth drain electrodes formed between the first signal line and the second signal line, and provides a switch having electrodes in the order of the first gate electrode, the first drain electrode, the second gate electrode, the first source electrode, the third gate electrode, the second drain electrode, the fourth gate electrode, the second source electrode, the fifth gate electrode, the third drain electrode, the sixth gate electrode, the third source electrode, the seventh gate electrode, the fourth drain electrode, and the eighth gate electrode.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 24, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 22, 2010
    Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
    Inventors: In young Lee, Seok-Ju Yun, Sang-Gug Lee, Seong Hoon Choi, Chang Sun Kim
  • Patent number: 7737793
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, are described for calibrating control loops, specifically phase-locked loops. In one aspect, an apparatus is provided that includes an oscillator model that generates a predicted phase based on an input, a first averaging submodule that generates an average predicted phase over a predetermined number of samples, and a first summing submodule that receives a first corrected phase error and generates a predicted repetitive phase disturbance using the first corrected phase error, the predicted phase, and the average predicted phase.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 26, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 15, 2010
    Assignee: Marvell International Ltd.
    Inventors: Edward Ying, Pantas Sutardja, David Rutherford
  • Patent number: 7737791
    Abstract: In applications that use fractional-N phase locked loops (PLLs), the use of spread spectrum clocking (SSC) to reduced electromagnetic interference (EMI) would be desirable, but conflicts can occur. Here, a circuit is provided that includes both fractional logic circuitry and spread spectrum logic circuitry. This logic circuitry operates in combination with a phase selector to generally ensure that the likelihood of conflicts (which can occur in conventional circuit) are reduced.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 5, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 15, 2010
    Assignee: Texas Instruments Deutschland GmbH
    Inventors: Puneet Sareen, Hermann Seibold
  • Patent number: 7737799
    Abstract: A simple, interference-free digital phase modulator is to be provided. To this end, the phase modulator is provided with a counter for outputting a counter signal on the basis of a predetermined clock signal and a comparator, which receives a current counter state from the counter, in order to record a digital input signal. The comparator compares the input signal with the current counter state on the basis of a predetermined allocation table and resets the counter, if the input signal corresponds to a counter state assigned via the allocation table. A predetermined signal value of the output counter signal is herewith phase-modulated as a function of the input signal. As only one phase position is generated with the circuit at any point in time, interferences, which are produced by the digital phase modulator itself, are significantly less.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 16, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 15, 2010
    Assignee: Siemens Audiologische Technik GmbH
    Inventor: Jürgen Reithinger
  • Patent number: 7737800
    Abstract: Provided is a frequency modulation circuit 1 for outputting a highly precise frequency-modulated signal regardless of variation in a characteristic of a VCO 15. A correction value calculation section 17 calculates a correction value Vt2 based on a voltage value (Vtx?Vt1) resulting from subtracting a control voltage Vt1, which is generated by a control voltage generation section 11, from a control voltage Vtx at which a sensitivity of the VCO 15 is maximized. A variable amplifier 18 amplifies the correction value Vt2. An addition section 13 outputs a control voltage Vt3, which results from adding the amplified correction value Vt2 to the control voltage Vt1, to the VCO 15 via a DAC 14.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 4, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 15, 2010
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventors: Akira Kato, Kaoru Ishida
  • Patent number: 7733193
    Abstract: DQPSK modulator control is provided using a single monitor photodiode with a selectively injected dither tone. The dither tone signal is sequentially injected into arm modulators and/or to a modulator driver port in time slots. A tapped signal at the output of the modulator is monitored synchronously with injected dither (I arm, Q arm, or phase modulator in third slot). The recovered dither output from a single photodiode is processed in the same sequence as the dither injection to adjust the bias to the optimal point: I-arm at the null point, Q-arm at the null point, and phase modulator at the quadrature point. This technique can be used for any control where the rate of change of the monitored condition due to systemic or environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, aging, etc.) is slow enough to allow time slot dither injection, monitor, and control.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 1, 2007
    Date of Patent: June 8, 2010
    Assignee: Ciena Corporation
    Inventors: Boris Kershteyn, Steven W. Cornelius
  • Patent number: 7733192
    Abstract: According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a voltage controlled oscillator controlling frequency of an output signal according to input voltage, the voltage controlled oscillator including a current controlled oscillator setting the frequency of the output signal based on control current, and a voltage-current converter including a transistor controlling a current amount of the control current according to the input voltage, in which the voltage-current converter is supplied with control voltage, and threshold value voltage of the transistor is controlled according to the control voltage.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 12, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 8, 2010
    Assignee: NEC Electronics Corporation
    Inventor: Ryota Yamamoto
  • Patent number: 7728686
    Abstract: A digital-controlled oscillator (DCO) is utilized in an all-digital phase-locked loop for eliminating frequency discontinuities. The DCO includes a tank module and a negative gm cell. The tank module comprises a plurality of cells, at least a portion of the cells comprising a first tracking set and a second tracking set for respectively handling an odd bit or an even bit. The odd bit and the even bit are related to an integer signal, a fractional signal or a combination thereof, the fractional signal is indicated by a primary voltage inputted to the DCO. With the DCO, frequency discontinuities and undesired spurs are eliminated.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 23, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 1, 2010
    Assignee: Mediatek Inc.
    Inventors: Jing-Hong Conan Zhan, Ping-Ying Wang, Hsiang-Hui Chang
  • Patent number: 7728678
    Abstract: A semiconductor device includes a voltage control and oscillation circuit oscillating at a frequency according to a first control voltage to output an oscillation signal, a frequency/voltage conversion circuit receiving the oscillation signal from the voltage control and oscillation circuit and converting a frequency of the oscillation signal into a voltage, a control voltage generation circuit generating a new second control voltage having a level between that of the voltage converted by the frequency/voltage conversion circuit and that of a second control voltage generated previously, and an analog integration circuit integrating the second control voltage to generate the first control voltage and outputting the first control voltage to the voltage control and oscillation circuit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 17, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 1, 2010
    Assignee: Renesas Technology Corp.
    Inventor: Katsuyoshi Mitsui