Patent ID: 11879963
Assignee: STMICROELECTRONICS S.R.L.
Field: Basic communication processes (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 10:
11. A circuit, comprising:
a tunable resonance circuit comprising:
first and second inductances coupled in series between first and second nodes, with a tap node between the first and second inductances configured to receive an input control signal;
first and second variable capacitances coupled between the first and second nodes; and
a set of switched capacitances coupled between the first and second nodes, the set of switched capacitances including a plurality of capacitance units, each capacitance unit comprising a first capacitance for that capacitance unit coupled between the first node and a switch and a second capacitance for the capacitance unit coupled between the switch and the second node; and

a flash analog-to-digital converter (ADC) configured to receive the input control signal and perform a coarse quantized tuning of a frequency of an output signal produced between the first and second nodes by:
quantizing an operating frequency range for the output signal produced between the first and second nodes as M·Δf, where M is an integer value ranging from 0 to N−1, where N is a number of intervals into which a frequency range for the output signal is divided, and where Δf is a resulting frequency step produced by the quantization; and
generating a value of M based upon the input control signal and outputting a control word to the switches of the plurality of capacitance units to close ones of those switches associated with the control word to thereby coarsely tune a frequency of the output signal.