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M.B. Srinivas
Electronics and Communication Engineering,
Birla Institute of Technology and Science,
Hyderabad Campus,
Hyderabad – India 500078
3. Proposed Work
In this paper, Schmitt trigger as an alternative to
buffer insertion is examined in buses. The motivation
for this approach is that while a buffer responds to an
input signal only after it exceeds a voltage of Vdd/2,
Schmitt trigger can be designed to have a threshold
voltage less than Vdd/2 and thus can be made to
respond faster. Figure 1: Output waveform with Schmitt trigger and
Buffer at output end
Let us consider an input signal with a fast rising
edge fed to an interconnect. Ideally, the signal at the
far-end of the interconnect should be in the same shape
but the interconnect delay, due to parasitic capacitance,
leads to far-end signal being obtained only after certain
time has elapsed. This value can be as high as a few
nanoseconds depending on the values of resistance,
parasitic capacitance. While a buffer is conventionally
used to restore the signal, its output is obtained only
after the input signal voltage crosses Vdd/2. However,
a Schmitt trigger can be designed to have a lower
threshold voltage so that it can respond faster than a
buffer. Figure 1 compares the response of a buffer and Figure 2: CMOS Buffer
a Schmitt trigger to a slowly varying input.
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both buffer as well as Schmitt trigger is almost same waveform we use buffer at the output end. Now until
i.e. 30ps. But we observe less delay in Schmitt trigger the delayed signal reached half the voltage high the
output (figure 1) as compared to buffer output. This is output of the buffer will remain low i.e. Zero volt, and
due to early switching of signal at Vdd/3 instead of whenever it reaches to a value more than half the
Vdd/2. voltage high, it will directly go to high within the
switching time of a buffer as shown in figure 1. So
effectively we saved half of the RC product in terms of
delay and signal is free of noise and ripples due to
coupling effect.
The advantage of using Schmitt trigger rather than Figure 5: Relative critical repeater length for
buffer is that the user can control voltage threshold different submicron technologies.
limits. Let us consider an input signal with a very low
In the proposed work we replace each of the buffer
rise time is fed to the input end of the interconnect.
Ideally the output signal should be in the same shape in the interconnect with a four transistor Schmitt
but the interconnect delay/RC delay [10] will play a trigger as shown in figure 6 and 7. Since this is first
vital role in submicron technologies. So the output work on the proposed technique we have taken only
signal gets delayed due to the parasitic capacitance and linear interconnects into consideration and will discuss
inductance, and reaches to voltage high after a certain the tree structures in the future work. Now we can
decide the threshold voltage to be quite lower or
amount of time. This delay can be as high as a few
nanoseconds when the values of resistance and higher. In our experiments we set it to Vdd/3, thus we
capacitance are quite high. So we get a delayed as well found that whenever the delayed input waveform rises
as deformed output waveform. To rectify this to the set value of voltage, the output will jump to Vdd
within the switching time of Schmitt trigger. So we
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save the time difference between the rise time of output schmitt trigger will have significantly less delay than a
pulse in case of buffer and Schmitt trigger. Figure 1 regular inverter/buffer type repeater.
shows the output waveform with both methods for
same interconnect.
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Figure 9: Comparison among noisy, delayed, buffer
and schmitt trigger output. Figure 11: Noise reduction using schmitt trigger.
For the same simulation the aggressor noise was taken 5. Conclusion
with very high glitches of more than Vdd/2. Figure
11.b shows the effected signal due to crosstalk effects In this paper we proposed a novel technique for
and figure 11.c shows the output waveform of the buffer insertion which is based on schmitt trigger. A
effected signal, which depicts that high noise activities four transistor schmitt trigger is used for this analysis.
are cancelled by Schmitt trigger approach. Our simulations results show that proposed technique
surpass the existing techniques in terms of delay,
power and crosstalk noise reduction. It is also proved
here that the proposed technique works even at nano
meter designs.
10. References
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