Switched capacitor DC-DC converter ASICS for the upgraded LHC trackers

Abstract

The High Luminosity Upgrade of the ATLAS Inner Tracker puts demanding requirements on the powering system of the silicon strip detector modules due to 10-fold increase of the channel count compared to the existing SemiConductor Tracker. Therefore, new solutions for the powering scheme must be elaborated. Currently two possible approaches, the serial powering and the parallel powering scheme using the DC-DC conversion technique, are under development. This paper describes two switched capacitor DC-DC converters designed in a 130 nm technology. For the optimized step-down converter, foreseen for the parallel powering scheme, power efficiency of 97% has been achieved, while for the charge pump, designed for the serial powering scheme, power efficiency of 85% has been achieved. © 2010 iop Publishing Ltd and sissa.