DLL design of SMD structure with DCC using reduced delay lines

DLLs(Delay Locked Loops) have widely been used in many systems in order to achieve the clock synchronization. A SMD (Synchronous Mirror Delay) structure is used both for skew reduction and for DCC (Duty Cycle Correction). In this paper, a SMD based DLL with DCC using Reduced Delay Lines is proposed in order to reduce the clock skew and correct the duty cycle. The merged structure allows the forward delay array to be shared between the DLL and the DCC, and yields a 25% saving in the number of the required delay cells. The designed chip was fabricated using a 0.25μm 1-poly, 4-metal CMOS process. Measurement results showed the 3% duty cycle error when the input signal ranges from 80% to 20% and the clock frequency ranges from 400MHz to 600MHz. The locking operation needs 3 clock and duty correction requires only 5 clock cycles as feature with SMD structure.