Patent ID: 8154356

Claim:
An oscillator, comprising: an array of capacitances, the array of capacitances formed as a matrix of capacitances, wherein at least some capacitance values associated with the array of capacitances differ in capacitance values; a thermometer decoder coupled to said array of capacitances, the thermometer decoder including a line decoder and a column decoder, the line decoder associated with thermometer to control activation and deactivation of capacitances associated with one or more rows of the matrix of capacitances, and the column decoder associated with thermometer is to control activation and deactivation of capacitances associated with one or more columns of the matrix of capacitances; and a digital control input coupled to the thermometer decoder, wherein a number of activated capacitances of the array of capacitances correspond to a number represented by at least part of a digital control word supplied to the digital control input; a fixed capacitance; and an inductance, wherein a frequency of an output signal of the oscillator is a function of the fixed capacitance and activated ones of the array of capacitances.