A Temperature-Compensated Single-Crystal Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) MEMS Oscillator with a CMOS Amplifier Chip

Abstract

Self-sustained feedback oscillators referenced to MEMS/NEMS resonators have the potential for a wide range of applications in timing and sensing systems. In this paper, we describe a real-time temperature compensation approach to improving the long-term stability of such MEMS-referenced oscillators. This approach is implemented on a ~26.8 kHz self-sustained MEMS oscillator that integrates the fundamental in-plane mode resonance of a single-crystal silicon-on-insulator (SOI) resonator with a programmable and reconfigurable single-chip CMOS sustaining amplifier. Temperature compensation using a linear equation fit and look-up table (LUT) is used to obtain the near-zero closed-loop temperature coefficient of frequency (TCf) at around room temperature (~25 °C). When subject to small temperature fluctuations in an indoor environment, the temperature-compensated oscillator shows a >2-fold improvement in Allan deviation over the uncompensated counterpart on relatively long time scales (averaging time τ > 10,000 s), as well as overall enhanced stability throughout the averaging time range from τ = 1 to 20,000 s. The proposed temperature compensation algorithm has low computational complexity and memory requirement, making it suitable for implementation on energy-constrained platforms such as Internet of Things (IoT) sensor nodes.

Keywords

• oscillator
• resonator
• micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS)
• application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)
• MEMS-ASIC integration
• programmable sustaining amplifier
• single-crystal silicon (SC-Si)
• silicon-on-insulator (SOI)
• real-time temperature compensation loop