The feasibility of designing digitally programmable delay elements (PDEs) employing neuron-MOS mechanism is investigated in this work. By coupling the capacitors on the gate of the MOS transistor, the current flowing through the transistor can be digitally tuned without additional static power consumption. Various switching delays are generated by a clock buffer stage in this manner. Two types of neuron-MOS-based PDEs are suggested in this article. One of them is realized by directly applying capacitor-coupling technology on the transistors of an inverter as a clock buffer. The delay programmability is realized by tuning the charging/discharging current through the neuron-MOS inverter digitally. Since no additional transistor is introduced into the charging/discharging path, the performance fluctuation due to process variations on MOS transistors is reduced. The temperature effect is also partially compensated by the proposed neuron-MOS implementation. Another type of PDE circuit is proposed by employing a reliable reference-current-generator, where the neuron-MOS transistor acts as a linearly tunable resistance. A stable reference current is generated and used for charging/discharging the inverter as a clock buffer. As a result, the switching delay of the inverter is linearly programmed by digital input patterns. In general, both types of suggested PDE circuits achieve improved or fair performances over the robustness, power consumption, and linearity.
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