MOS Current Mode Logic for Low Power, Low Noise 
CORDIC Computation in Mixed-Signal Environments

Jason Musicer and Jan Rabaey

Proceedings ISLPED 2000, July 2000

In this work, MOS Current Mode Logic (MCML) is analyzed for application to low power, mixed signal environments. A small MCML cell library is developed and optimized for several different performance requirements. The cells are then applied to the generation of piplelined CORDIC structures and compared with equivalent CMOS circuits. MCML CORDICs are designed which can operate from 125MHz to 310MHz with power consumption varying between 4.3mW and 18.6mW. These power results are up to 1.5 times less than CMOS CORDICs with equivalent propagation delays. Design was done in a 0.25μm standard CMOS process from ST Microelectronics.