A quantized pulse coupled oscillator for slow clocking of peer-to-peer networks

In this paper, we present analysis and design of a pulse coupled oscillator capable of synchronizing a peer-to-peer (P2P) network to an arbitrarily slow clock. Slow clocks, while desirable for synchronizing low data rate P2P networks and minimizing power consumption, are difficult to realize with analog relaxation oscillators. We present a digital counter based design as an alternative and characterize the unique issues that emerge from the discreteness of this design in both time and level. We discover that the discrete nature of this circuit gives rise to two alternative approaches to pulse coupling, and find that the one that delays the reset of the counter is a significantly better choice for enabling high quality synchronization with lower cost in time-to-synchronize. We present a final design in 65nm CMOS based upon this analysis.