Many high performance mixed-signal products, such as high speed analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital-to-analog converters (DACs), agile radio frequency (RF) transceivers, clocking, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) typically use ultralow noise, low drop-out (LDO) linear voltage regulators to provide clean supplies to maximize signal chain performance. With high demands of more integrated functionalities and lower power consumptions, those large scale mixed-signal integrated circuits (IC) feature a design with lower geometry process to fit more transistors. This trend affects its power requirements as well. The core supply voltage keeps reducing, but with significantly increased load current, to adopt more analog or digital functionalities in recent years.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds