A Low-Power CMOS Antenna-Switch Driver Using Shared-Charge Recycling Charge Pump

A technique to reduce power consumption of charge-pump-based antenna-switch drivers by recycling wasted charges in clock buffers of charge pumps is presented. The proposed shared-charge recycling technique allows discharging current of capacitors in the clock buffers to be shared and recycled to charge other capacitors. The clock buffers only need to charge the capacitors half way, and the current consumption can be cut in half. Furthermore, because the burden of the clock buffers is lessened, the driving capability of the clock buffers can be reduced. This advantage can result in the benefits of a reduced size of a chip area and lowered manufacturing cost. Furthermore, the relationship between the charge-recycling time and the current saving by the charge recycling is analyzed and incorporated in the driver design. The proposed antenna-switch driver using the shared-charge recycling technique has been fabricated using a standard 0.35-μ m CMOS technology. The fabricated chip saves over 30% of current over conventional drivers. The details on measurement results and comparisons with conventional charge pumps are also presented.