Ultra-low supply voltage crystal quartz oscillator

TL;DR

This paper presents an ultra-low-voltage crystal quartz oscillator using a HEMT and quartz resonator, achieving extremely low power consumption suitable for low-temperature radio devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel oscillator design that operates at less than 17 mV supply voltage with significantly reduced power consumption.

Findings

Oscillator operates at less than 17 mV supply voltage

Power consumption as low as 300 nW

Steady oscillations at 25 MHz

Abstract

An ultra-low-voltage crystal quartz oscillator is proposed. The approach to its design is essentially based on using a HEMT operating in unsaturated dc regime and a quartz resonator as a resonant impedance transformer. The 25 MHz prototype shows steady oscillations at the supply voltage of less than 17 mV and the power consumption as low as 300 nW, i.e., 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than other to-date oscillators. This approach is good for building ultra-low consumption radio devices including those working at low temperatures.