Clock Distribution Scheme using Coplanar Transmission Lines

The current work describes a new standing wave oscillator scheme aimed for clock propagation on coplanar transmission lines on a silicon die. The design is aimed for clock signaling in the gigahertz range (we are able to achieve clock rates of 8 GHz and above). The clock is transported as an oscillatory wave on a pair of conductors. An oscillatory standing wave is formed across a transmission line loop, which is connected beginning-to-end through a Mobius configuration. A single cross coupled inverter pair is required to maintain oscillation across the ring. The design is aimed to achieve low skew, low power and extreme high frequency global clock situations. The energy recycling nature of a standing wave along a transmission line allows us to keep very high frequencies oscillations along a conductor with almost no power consumption at all. A special wide input range driver was designed to convert the differential signals on the coplanar transmission lines into a square clock pulse for standard clock sinks. The design uses CMOS 90 nm BSim3v model cards for all simulations, with the transmission lines implemented on Metal8.