AVR351: Runtime calibration and compensation

of RC oscillators

8-bit
Features Microcontrollers
• Use of the Oscillator Sampling Interface in calibration.
• Slow RC oscillator frequency prediction.
• Ultra Low Power RC oscillator frequency measurement.
• Fast RC frequency calibration. Application Note

1 Introduction
Due to frequency drift over temperature, the clock sources in AVR should be
calibrated at operating temperature or runtime if system temperature changes over
time, to achieve the best possible accuracy.
Several of the new battery-monitoring devices, e.g. ATmega16HVA, have a very
accurate coulomb counting ADC, and thus need a precise time reference to
achieve the best possible results. They also have protection circuitry, and thus
need a low-power clock source to minimize power consumption. The oscillators,
signature bytes, internal temperature sensor and the Oscillator Sampling Interface
provide the ways to achieve this.
The oscillators in these devices are the Slow RC, Ultra Low Power RC and Fast
RC Oscillator. The Slow RC oscillator has a very predictable behavior over
temperature, and can thus be used for runtime calibration of the other oscillators. In
some devices it is also used for the Coulomb Counting ADC. The Ultra Low Power
oscillator has very low power consumption and enables the lowest possible system
power consumption, thus making it ideal for battery protection. In some devices it is
also used for the Coulomb Counting ADC. The last oscillator is the Fast RC
oscillator that is routed to parts of the system concerned with the AVR core, e.g.
core, flash, eeprom and timers.

Rev. 8053A-AVR-10/08
2 Theory of operation
Calibration of the clock sources in the AVR parts is done by either adjusting the
frequency directly or measuring the actual frequency and compensating for it. This
application note describes the properties and use of the various oscillators in battery
monitoring devices, and how calibration is performed. The new battery-monitoring
devices, e.g. ATmega16HVA have a module called Oscillator Sampling Interface that
is used to simplify measurements of clock periods and calibration.

2.1 Oscillator Sampling Interface

The Oscillator Sampling Interface (OSI) is a module that helps measuring the period
of a clock input against the system clock. The OSI pre-scales the selected input and
outputs this signal. This pre-scaled clock output can be directly seen by reading the
OSIST bit in OSICSR, but should be used to trigger the input capture function of a
connected timer for greatest accuracy. In e.g. the ATmega16HVA the Slow RC or
ULP RC oscillator can be selected as input to the OSI with 128x pre-scaling and
Timer/Counter0 used to capture the period.

2.2 Slow RC oscillator

The Slow RC oscillator has a predictable frequency drift over temperature and
provides an accurate clock as reference for calibration or for coulomb counting ADC.
From production the following two parameters are known and stored in the signature
row of the:
• Slow RC oscillator frequency at high temperature (usually 70ºC or 85ºC) in
production test (Slow RC word).
• Slow RC oscillator temperature drift coefficient (Slow RC Temp Prediction
word)
When knowing these parameters and by measuring the on-chip temperature, the
actual Slow RC oscillator frequency can be determined runtime for any temperature
within the operating area.
Using the calibration scheme presented in this application note, the Slow RC
oscillator frequency can be determined with an error less than 1% over the specified
temperature range. The Slow RC oscillator is also used for the coulomb counter in
some devices.

2.2.1 Calculating Slow RC oscillator period at current temperature

The formula for calculation of Slow RC oscillator period in e.g. ATmega16HVA is
given in Equation 2-1.
Equation 2-1. Actual clock period of Slow RC Oscillator.
Slow RC word − Slow RC Temp word ⋅ ( T − T HOT ) / 64
TSlow RC ( μs ) =
1024

2.3 Ultra Low Power RC oscillator

The Ultra Low Power (ULP) RC oscillator provides a very low power clock that is used
for Battery Protection, Watchdog timer and Reset Logic, and could also be used for

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 AVR351
the Coulomb Counting ADC (CC-ADC) in some devices. Its frequency drifts with
temperature and process, and needs to be compensated for. The recommended way
is comparing the actual period with the calculated Slow RC oscillator reference using
the fast RC to measure both periods and the calculate the ULP RC period from the
Slow RC period.
The nominal period at a high temperature (usually 70°C or 85°C) is also stored in the
signature row. This value gives a rough estimate of the ULP oscillator frequency and
can be used without further compensation for less demanding modules, e.g. to
determine battery protection timing.

2.3.1 Measuring Ultra Low Power oscillator period against Slow RC oscillator
Equation 2-2 shows the formula for measuring and calculating the ULP RC period
with the Slow RC as reference.
Equation 2-2. Calculation of ULP RC Oscillator clock period.
number of CPU cycles in n prescaled ULP RC periods
TULP RC ( μs ) = TSlow RC ⋅
number of CPU cycles in n prescaled Slow RC periods

2.4 Fast RC Oscillator

The Fast RC oscillator is the clock for the CPU core, RAM, Flash, EEPROM, VADC
and other I/O-modules. At startup the calibration byte, FOSCCAL, is automatically
loaded from the signature row into the FOSCCAL register. This is a calibrated value
from Atmel production, and is guaranteed to give 1MHz ±4% at either 25°C or a high
temperature (70ºC to 85°C) with default clock prescaler. The Fast RC oscillator
frequency against FOSCCAL value for ATmega16HVA is plotted in Figure 2-1.
The Fast RC oscillator might need to be calibrated for some applications, e.g.
asynchronous serial communication, especially if temperature is very different from
production calibration or changing. This can e.g. be done runtime against the Slow
RC oscillator as described in this application note. Note that the Fast RC oscillator
frequency should under no circumstance be calibrated to more than 10% above the
nominal frequency, since this may cause EEPROM and Flash access to fail.
Figure 2-1. ATmega16HVA Fast RC characteristics

The default FOSCCAL value is selected such that it is in the lower half of a segment.
It is therefore sufficient to use that default segment and the one below to calibrate the
oscillator frequency to 8MHz over the whole temperature range. To avoid a large
frequency change when shifting between the two segments, a FOSC SEGMENT

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 value is also stored in the signature row. This is the first FOSCCAL value giving a
lower frequency than the lowest value in the default segment, and should be used
when calibrating the Fast RC oscillator.

2.4.1 Runtime calibration of Fast RC against Slow RC oscillator using the Oscillator sampling interface
Equation 2-3. Fast RC oscillator period.
128 ⋅ n
TFast RC ( μs ) = TSlow RC ⋅
number of CPU cycles in n prescaled Slow RC periods
n = number of prescaled Slow RC periods

A typical calibration sequence incorporates measuring “number of CPU cycles in n

prescaled Slow RC periods” and comparing this value to the reference that can be
found by rearranging Equation 2-3 and inserting the calculated Slow RC oscillator
period at the actual temperature and the desired Fast RC oscillator period. The
FOSCCAL is then adjusted and a new measurement is done. This is repeated until
either the best value is found or a sufficient accuracy is attained
This procedure is not very resource consuming from a CPU point-of-view since the
OSI interface is used to trigger a Timer/Counter0 input capture. However, since the
Fast RC oscillator must be running during the calibration, the chip cannot operate in
the deepest sleep mode (Power Save). Hence, extended calibration beyond actual
need may increase power consumption unnecessarily.

2.5 Internal temperature sensor

The ATmega16HVA have an internal temperature sensor that can be sampled with
the voltage ADC. Routines for getting accurate temperature results have been
included for demonstration, but the reader is directed to application note AVR353 for
more details.

3 Implementation
This application note includes source code with routines for frequency calculation,
measurement and calibration. It can be downloaded as a zip-archive from Atmel Web.
The source contains code consisting of both functions for calibration and supporting
routines. The code has source documentation (see section Source documentation),
while this section documents the code at a higher level.

3.1 Signature bytes

The ATmega16HVA contains extensive signature row data. A file defining all
signature bytes, together with a macro for reading signature bytes, is provided with
the source code. In this application only the relevant bytes are used.

3.2 Temperature measurements

The Slow RC oscillator period calculation requires measuring on-chip or system
temperature. In an actual battery application this would usually be part of the interrupt
controlled VADC measurements, but in this application a function for sampling the
internal temperature sensor is provided. To ensure accurate measurements, a
function for calibrating the voltage reference with factory calibration from the signature

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 AVR351
row is provided. For more details on the VADC, temperature measurements and the
voltage reference please see application note AVR353.

3.3 Oscillator Sampling Interface

The OSI is used to generate a capture event in Timer/Counter0, but to avoid using
resources needed for ADC measurements and communications the Capture interrupt
flag is polled instead of using actual interrupts. This can be rewritten to interrupt
control if so is desired. A dedicated subroutine for measuring a number of CPU cycles
in a number of OSI pre-scaled clocks (in this case 8) are included and used in the
ULP RC Oscillator measurement and the Fast RC Oscillator Calibration.

3.4 Slow RC Oscillator period calculation

The Slow RC oscillator period is calculated by inputting on-chip temperature to the
provided function, which uses Equation 2-1 to calculate the period except that the
result is not divided by 1024. This increases the accuracy and enables the result to be
used directly for calibrating the Fast RC oscillator without any scaling except if system
frequency is different from 1 MHz. The resulting equation is shown in Equation 3-1.
Equation 3-1. Clock period of Slow RC Oscillator used.
TSlow RC [μs * 1024 ] = Slow RC word − Slow RC Temp word ⋅ ( T − T HOT ) / 64

3.5 ULP RC Oscillator measurement

The period of the ULP RC oscillator is measured against the Slow RC oscillator with
the OSI. Slow RC oscillator period is input to the ULP RC oscillator function, which
then measures the period of both 8 OSI pre-scaled Slow RC and ULP RC oscillator
periods. Finally, the ULP RC oscillator period is calculated from Equation 2-2, but as
the Slow RC oscillator period is not divided by 1024 the ULP RC result is neither.

3.6 Fast RC Oscillator calibration

The fast RC oscillator is calibrated against the Slow RC oscillator. The function takes
the Slow RC period as input and searches linearly from the current FOSCCAL value.
Initially a search direction is determined and then the FOSCCAL is adjusted in that
direction until the Fast RC frequency has passed the target. The error at that point is
then compared to the error at the previous FOSCCAL value and the value giving the
least error is selected and a success value returned. The FOSC SEGMENT value
form the signature row is used to avoid a step in frequency when jumping from the
upper to the lower segment and reverse. Since the two segments shall provide a
sufficient search range to find a FOSCCAL value for all temperatures the search is
aborted, the default FOSCCAL value loaded and a failure code returned if the upper
or lower limits are encountered.
A flowchart for the function is shown in Figure 3-1.

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Figure 3-1. Flowchart for the Fast RC oscillator calibration.
Calibrate
Fast RC oscillator

Calculate Target for

Fast RC cycles

Error = Fast RC
cycles - Target

Save error and No Yes Save error and

Error > 0 ?
FOSCCAL FOSCCAL

FOSCCAL++ FOSCCAL--

Yes FOSCCAL = Yes

FOSCCAL =
lower value in default
FOSC Segment +1?
segment?
FOSCCAL =
FOSCCAL =
lower value in
No No FSOC
default
SEGMENT
segment

FOSCCAL = Yes Yes FOSCCAL =

upper end? lower end?

No No
Return FAILED

Error = Fast RC Error = Fast RC

cycles - Target cycles - Target

Yes No No Yes
Error < 0 Error > 0

Previous error <

Current Error

FOSCCAL =
previous
FOSCCAL

Return SUCCESS

4 Source documentation
Please see readme.html provided with the code for complete source documentation.
Complete complier information, settings, and device information are also provided
there.

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8053A-AVR-10/08