PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16169831
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-10
Publication Date: 2019-03
Patent Classification: ["327", "536000"]

Abstract:
A charge pump method and apparatus is described having various aspects. Noise injection from a charge pump to other circuits may be reduced by limiting both positive and negative clock transition rates, as well as by limiting drive currents within clock generator driver circuits, and also by increasing a control node AC impedance of certain transfer capacitor coupling switches. A single-phase clock may be used to control as many as all active switches within a charge pump, and capacitive coupling may simplify biasing and timing for clock signals controlling transfer capacitor coupling switches. Any combination of such aspects of the method or apparatus may be employed to quiet and/or simplify charge pump designs over a wide range of charge pump architectures.

Claim (Index 7):
A charge pump circuit for generating an output voltage supply, comprising:\n (a) a charge pump clock generating circuit generating a clock signal, the charge pump clock generating circuit including a ring oscillator comprising an odd number of inverting driver sections cascaded sequentially in a ring such that each driver section has an output coupled to a next driver section input, wherein a first driver section is next after a last driver section and the output of the last driver section constitutes the clock signal, and wherein each driver section includes associated active limiting circuitry, the active limiting circuitry including a source current limit circuit coupled between a voltage source and the associated driver section and configured to limit the current source capability of the associated driver section, and a sink current limit circuit coupled between the associated driver section and a common reference voltage and configured to limit the current sink capability of the associated driver section, wherein the active limiting circuitry limits output transitions dv/dt of the clock signal and causes the clock signal to have a substantially sine-like shape; and (b) a capacitive charge pump comprising at least one transfer capacitor having an input terminal and an output terminal, and a plurality of transfer capacitor coupling switches, each coupled to the clock signal and to one of the input terminal or output terminal of a corresponding one of the at least one transfer capacitor, and each switchable between a conducting state and a non-conducting state under control of the coupled clock signal;\n wherein the plurality of transfer capacitor coupling switches are controlled by the coupled clock signal so as to couple the input terminal of the corresponding transfer capacitor to a voltage source during periodic first times, and to couple the output terminal of the corresponding transfer capacitor to a voltage output terminal during periodic second times that are not concurrent with the periodic first times, and \n wherein there are periods of time when all transfer capacitor coupling switches coupled to a corresponding transfer capacitor are in the non-conducting state.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 2.0
- Percentile: 97.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.70667
- Patent Class: 327.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['14883525', '12799583', '13769780', '15179416', '15670945']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8000177771352646
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5459471986788554
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7746107192896237
- Mean Citation Score: 332.29849
- Max Citation Score: 420.8154
- Similarity Product: 361.467121202302

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test