An ＂automatic power down＂ method is introduced to design a 4/5 prescaler,with the characteristic of making one of its D-flip-flops power down when it operates in divide-by-4 mode. Implemented with the TSMC 0.25vm mixed-sig- nal CMOS process,the 4/5 MOS current mode logic prescaler is designed with this automatic power down technique. The simulation results show that the new 4/5 prescaler is immune to the ＂wake-up＂ issue and thereby retains the same maxi- mum operating frequency as the conventional prescaler. An integer-N divider with this proposed prescaler and with the di- vision ratio 66/67 is manufactured,and it is estimated to save more than 20% of the power compared with the conventional 4/5 prescaler.
