The Impact of Gate Leakage Current on PLL in 65 nm Technology: Analysis and Optimization

For CMOS technology of 65 nm and beyond, the gate leakage current can not be negligible anymore. In this paper, the impact of the gate leakage current in ring voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) on phase- locked loop (PLL) is analyzed and modeled. A voltage -to-voltage (V-to-V) circuit is proposed to reduce the voltage ripple on Vctrl induced by the gate leakage current. The side effects induced by the V-to-V circuit are described and optimized either. The PLL design is based on a standard 65 nm CMOS technology with a 1.8 V power supply. Simulation results show that 97 % ripple voltage is smoothed at 216 MHz output frequency. The RMS and peak-to-peak jitter are 3 ps and 14.8 ps, respectively