A 16-bit low-power microcontroller with monolithic MEMS-LC clocking

Low-power, single-chip integrated systems are prevailing in remote applications due to the increasing power and delay cost of inter-chip communication compared to on-chip computation. The paper describes the design and measured performance of a fully-functional digital core with a low-jitter, monolithic, MEMS-LC clock reference. This chip has been fabricated in TSMC's 0.18 μm MM/RF bulk CMOS process. Maximum power consumption of the complete microsystem is 48.78 mW operating at 90 MHz with a 1.8 V power supply.