0.5V-V<inf>IN</inf>, 165-mA/mm² Fully-Integrated Digital LDO Based on Event-Driven Self-Triggering Control

Abstract

In recent digital low-drop-out (LDO) regulator designs, event-driven (ED) control achieved significantly better scaling in the output capacitor and voltage droop over Time-Driven (TD) one. The state-of-the-art ED LDO design, however, still has several drawbacks including long settling time and low current density. This paper presents a new LDO based on novel self-triggering ED control and initialization. The 0.5V digital LDO in a 65 nm achieves the best-in-class performance in the droop voltage, output capacitor size, settling time, and current density over the prior ED and TD LDOs.