Design strategies and decoupling techniques for reducing the effects of electrical interference in mixed-mode IC's

A key issue in the successful integration of analog circuits is a stable analog power supply. Traditional on-chip decoupling methods exhibit transients in the supply of voltage drops and power losses. This paper introduces the RLC decoupling method that features an enhanced transient response while being especially suited for low-power, low voltage applications. Both a theoretical and a practical approach are presented together with measurement results. As the benefits of a stable local power supply can be lost by the inadequate connection of two subcircuits with relative variations on the local grounds, a differential approach of signal transfer is proposed. Furthermore, the effect of a good local decoupling can be deteriorated by substrate noise, so some attention is given to this problem too.