A low-voltage low-power CMOS voltage reference based on subthreshold MOSFETs

This paper describes a CMOS voltage reference using only resistors and transistors working in weak inversion,without the need for any bipolar transistors.The voltage reference is designed and fabricated by a 0.18μm CMOS process.The experimental results show that the proposed voltage reference has a temperature coefficient of 370 ppm/℃at a 0.8 V supply voltage over the temperature range of-35 to 85℃and a 0.1%variation in supply voltage from 0.8 to 3 V.Furthermore,the supply current is only 1.5μA at 0.8 V supply voltage.     

一种工作在亚阈值区的低电压低功耗基准电压电路

本文提出了一种不使用三极管而只使用工作在亚阈值区的晶体管和电阻的电压基准。使用0.18um工艺进行流片以及测试的结果表明：本文所设计的电压基准可在0.8V的低电压下工作,在温度从-35˚C到85˚C的范围内,温度系数为370ppm/˚C;电源电压从0.8V到3V的条件下,电压偏差小于0.1%。而且在电源电压为0.8V的条件下,整个芯片的功耗只有1.5uA。     

A CMOS low-voltage low-power temperature sensor

Temperature sensing circuits are used in a wide range of applications such as in the biomedical area, cold chain monitoring and industrial applications. In the biomedical area, temperature patient monitoring systems can be found in a wide range of hospital applications such as the intensive care unit, surgery rooms and clinical analysis. When the systems also incorporate also communication features, they form a telemedicine system in which the patients can be remotely monitored. The need of portability promotes a demand for sensors and signal conditioners that can be placed directly on the patient or even implanted. Implanted systems provide comfort for the patient during the physiologic data acquisition. These systems should operate preferably without a battery, in which the energy is obtained by inductive coupling (RF link). Implanted devices require low-voltage and low-power operation in a small silicon area in order to offer safety to the patient, mainly in terms of excessive exposure to RF. This work presents a low-voltage low-power temperature sensor, suitable for implanted devices. The circuit topology is based on the composite transistors operating in weak inversion, requiring extremely low current, at low-voltage (0.8 V), with just 100 nW power dissipation. The circuit is very simple and its implementation requires a small silicon area (0.062 mm²). The tests conducted in the prototypes validate the circuit operation.     

A low-voltage, low-power CMOS delay element

A low-voltage, low-power CMOS delay element is proposed. With a unit CMOS inverter load, a delay from 2.6 ns to 76.3 ms is achieved in 0.8 μm CMOS technology. Based on a CMOS thyristor concept, the delay value of the proposed element can be varied over a wide range by a control current. The inherent advantage of a CMOS thyristor in low voltage domains enables this delay element to work down to the supply voltage of 1 V while the threshold voltage of the nMOS and pMOS transistors are 840 mV and -770 mV, respectively. The designed delay value is less sensitive to supply voltage and temperature variation than RC-based or CMOS inverter-based delay elements. Temperature compensation and jitter performance in a noisy environment are also discussed     

A low-voltage low-power programmable fractional PLL in 0.18-μm CMOS process

The prolific growth of portable electronic devices (PED) has generated tremendous interests among researchers to develop programmable phase-locked loops (PLLs) because of their abilities to produce multiple spectrally pure output frequencies from a fixed frequency oscillator. The power consumption of the RF block of a PED is mostly dominated by the programmable PLLs which are widely used in the design of these devices. Therefore to reduce the overall power consumption in a portable device and to increase the battery life time, low-voltage and low-power are the two key requirements for the PLL design. In this work an improved programmable fractional frequency divider has been incorporated to enhance the overall performance of the PLL that includes lower operating supply voltage and lower power consumption compared to the state-of-art. The proposed programmable fractional PLL has an operating frequency in the range of 1.7–2.5 GHz, and a frequency resolution of 2.5 MHz. Measurement results reveal that the proposed programmable PLL can operate at 2.4 GHz with a 1.46 V power supply voltage and only 10 mW of power consumption.     

A 5-GHz low-voltage and low-power CMOS LC voltage controlled oscillator for 802.11a wireless LAN applications

In this paper, a low phase noise and low power 5.15?GHz LC-tank VCO is presented and analysed. The phase noise achieved is??91,??116 and??126?dBc/Hz at 100?KHz, 1?MHz and 3?MHz offsets respectively from the carrier frequency of 5.15?GHz, with 1.8?V power supply voltage and giving a very low power consumption of about 2.5?mW by considering the proposed oscillator topology, which consumes less power than the classical oscillator using the traditional differential transconductor pair. A broad tuning range has been achieved by means of standard mode PMOS varactors. The tunability of the designed VCO covers 530?MHz, from 4.78?GHz up to 5.31?GHz. Predicted performance has been verified by analyses and simulations using ELDO-RF tool with 0.35?µm CMOS TSMC parameters.     

Wordline voltage generating system for low-power low-voltage flashmemories

A low-power wordline voltage generating system is developed for low-voltage flash memories. The limit for the stand-by current including the operation current for the band-gap reference and the stand-by wordline voltage generator is discussed. The system was implemented on a 1.8-V 32-Mb flash memory fabricated with a 0.25-μm flash memory process and achieved with very low stand-by current of 2 μA typically, and high operating frequency of 25 MHz in read operation at 1.8 V. A low-voltage level shifter with high-speed switching is also proposed     

A low-voltage low-power voltage reference based on subthreshold MOSFETs

In this work, a new low-voltage low-power CMOS voltage reference independent of temperature is presented. It is based on subthreshold MOSFETs and on compensating a PTAT-based variable with the gate-source voltage of a subthreshold MOSFET. The circuit, designed with a standard 1.2-/spl mu/m CMOS technology, exhibits an average voltage of about 295 mV with an average temperature coefficient of 119 ppm//spl deg/C in the range -25 to +125/spl deg/C. A brief study of gate-source voltage behavior with respect to temperature in subthreshold MOSFETs is also reported.     

Simultaneous power supply, threshold voltage, and transistor sizeoptimization for low-power operation of CMOS circuits

This paper demonstrates a new approach for minimizing the total of the static and the dynamic power dissipation components in a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) logic network required to operate at a specified clock frequency. The algorithms presented can be used to design ultralow-power CMOS logic circuits by joint optimization of supply voltage, threshold voltage and device widths. The static, dynamic and short-circuit energy components are considered and an efficient heuristic is developed that delivers over an order of magnitude savings in power over conventional optimization methods     

Monolithic voltage conversion in low-voltage CMOS technologies

A high-to-low switching DC-DC converter that operates at input voltages up to two times as high as the maximum voltage permitted in a low-voltage CMOS technology is proposed in this paper. The proposed circuit technique is based on a cascode bridge that maintains the steady-state voltage differences among the terminals of all of the transistors within a range imposed by a specific low-voltage CMOS technology. An efficiency of 87.8% is achieved for 3.6-0.9 V conversion assuming a 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The DC-DC converter operates at a switching frequency of 97 MHz while supplying a DC current of 250 mA to the load.     

A variable threshold voltage inverter for CMOS programmable logiccircuits

A programmable input threshold voltage inverter compatible with double gate transistors fabrication processes is presented. Such a circuit is useful as a programmable input threshold buffer for general purpose circuits that can he included In both TTL and CMOS environments, or can be used as low cost analog programmable comparator. A prototype is fabricated and measured     

A CMOS threshold voltage reference source for very-low-voltage applications

This paper describes a CMOS voltage reference that makes use of weak inversion CMOS transistors and linear resistors, without the need for bipolar transistors. Its operation is analogous to the bandgap reference voltage, but the reference voltage is based on the threshold voltage of an nMOS transistor. The circuit implemented using 0.35 μm n-well CMOS TSMC process generates a reference of 741 mV under just 390 nW for a power supply of only 950 mV. The circuit presented a variation of 39 ppm/°C (after individual resistor trimming) for the −20 to +80 °C temperature range, and produced a line regulation of 25 mV/V for a power supply of up to 3 V.     

A low-voltage low-power instrumentation amplifier based on supply current sensing technique

In this paper a new low-voltage low-power instrumentation amplifier (IA) is presented. The proposed IA is based on supply current sensing technique where Op-Amps in traditional IA based on this technique are replaced with voltage buffers (VBs). This modification results in a very simplified circuit, robust performance against mismatches and high frequency performance. To reduce the required supply voltage, a low-voltage resistor-based current mirror is used to transfer the input current to the load. The input and output signals are of voltage kind and the proposed IA shows ideal infinite input impedance and a very low output one. PSPICE simulation results, using 0.18 μm TSMC CMOS technology and supply voltage of ±0.9 V, show a 71 dB CMRR and a 85 MHz constant −3 dB bandwidth for differential-mode gain (ranging from 0 dB to 18 dB). The output impedance of the proposed circuit is 1.7 Ω and its power consumption is 770 µW. The method introduced in this paper can also be applied to traditional circuits based on Op-Amp supply current sensing technique.     

A low-voltage low-power CMOS fully differential linear transconductor with mobility reduction compensation

A highly linear fully differential CMOS transconductor architecture based on flipped voltage follower (FVF) is proposed. The linearity of the proposed architecture is improved by mobility reduction compensation technique. The simulated total harmonic distortion (THD) of the proposed transconductor with 0.4V_pp differential input is improved from ?42 dB to ?55 dB while operating from 1.0 V supply. As an example of the applications of the proposed transconductor, a 4th-order 5 MHz Butterworth Gm-C filter is presented. The filter has been designed and simulated in UMC 130 nm CMOS process. It achieves THD of ?53 dB for 0.4V_pp differential input. It consumes 345 μw from 1.0 V single supply. Theoretical and simulated results are in good agreement.     

A low-power and high-performance CMOS fingerprint sensing andencoding architecture

A CMOS fingerprint sensor architecture with embedded cellular logic for image processing is presented. The system senses a fingerprint image with a capacitive technique and performs several image-processing algorithms, including thinning the ridges of the fingerprint structure and encoding it to its characteristic features. Image processing is achieved by application of hexagonal local operators implemented in pixel-parallel mixed neuron-MOS/CMOS logic circuits. The massive parallelism of the architecture leads to a very low power dissipation. Results of simulations and measurements on a demonstrator chip in 0.65-μm double-poly standard CMOS technology are shown. The approach is well suited for person-identification applications, especially in small and low-cost portable systems, such as smart cards     

Design of a CMOS low-power and low-voltage four-quadrant analog multiplier

A New CMOS four-quadrant analog multiplier is presented in this paper. The proposed multiplier is suitable for low supply-voltage operation and its power consumption is also very low. The proposed circuit has been simulated with the HSPICE and simulation results are given to confirm the feasibility of the proposed analog multiplier. According to the simulation results, under the supply voltage of 1.5 V, the input range of the proposed multiplier can be 120 mV and the corresponding maximum linearity error is less than 3.2%. Moreover, the power dissipation of the proposed circuit is only 6.7 μW. The proposed circuit is expected to be useful in analog signal processing applications.     

A novel low-voltage low-power fully differential voltage and current gained CCII for floating impedance simulations

In this paper we present a new current-mode basic building block that we named voltage and current gained second generation current conveyor (VCG-CCII). The proposed active block allows to control and tune both the CCII current gain and the voltage gain through external control voltages. It has been designed, at transistor level in a standard CMOS technology (AMS 0.35 μm), with a low single supply voltage (2 V), as a fully differential active block. The proposed integrated solution, having both low-voltage (LV) and low-power (LP) characteristics, can be applied with success in suitable IC applications such as floating capacitance multipliers and floating inductance simulators, utilizing a minimum number of active components (one and two, respectively). Simulation results, related to floating impedance simulators, are in good agreement with the theoretical expectations.     

Noncomplementary BiCMOS logic and CMOS logic for low-voltage,low-power operation-a comparative study

This paper presents results of a comprehensive comparative study of six bipolar complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (BiCMOS) noncomplementary logic design styles and two CMOS logic styles for low-voltage, low-power operation. These logic styles have been compared for switching power consumption and power efficiency (power-delay product). The examination offers two alternative approaches never used in other comparative studies. First, all BiCMOS-based styles are compared to low-power CMOS styles as opposed to a single conventional static CMOS style. Second, a low-power methodology has been used as opposed to performance methodology referred to in the previous logic comparisons. The styles examined are bootstrapped BiCMOS, bootstrapped full-swing BiCMOS, bootstrapped bipolar CMOS, Seng-Rofail's bootstrapped BiCMOS, modified full-swing BiCMOS, dynamic full-swing BiCMOS, double pass-transistor CMOS, and inverter-based CMOS. These design styles have been compared at various power supply voltages (0.9-3 V), with various output load capacitances (0.1-1 pF) at the frequency 50 MHz and temperature 27°C. The results clearly show which logic style is the most beneficial for which specific conditions     

一种低压低功耗CMOS折叠-共源共栅运算放大器的设计

本文设计了一种低压低功耗CMOS折叠一共源共栅运算放大器.该运放的输入级采用折叠-共源共栅结构,可以优化输入共模范围,提高增益;由于采用AB类推挽输出级,实现了全摆幅输出,并且大大降低了功耗.采用TSMC 0.18μm CMOS工艺,基于BSIM3V3 Spice模型,用Hspice对整个电路进行仿真,结果表明:与传统结构相比,此结构在保证增益、带宽等放大器重要指标的基础上,功耗有了显著的降低,非常适合于低压低功耗应用.目前,该放大器已应用于14位∑-△模/数转换电路的设计中.     

CMOS voltage reference based on threshold voltage and thermal voltage

A fully CMOS based voltage reference circuit is presented in this paper. The voltage reference circuit uses the difference between gate-to-source voltages of two MOSFETs operating in the weak-inversion region to generate the voltage with positive temperature coefficient. The reference voltage can be obtained by combining this voltage difference and the extracted threshold voltage of a saturated MOSFET which has a negative temperature coefficient. This circuit, implemented in a standard 0.35-μm CMOS process, provides a nominal reference voltage of 1.361 V at 2-V supply voltage. Experimental results show that the temperature coefficient is 36.7 ppm/°C in the range from −20 to 100°C. It occupies 0.039 mm² of active area and dissipates 82 μW at room temperature. With a 0.5-μF load capacitor, the measured noise density at 100 Hz and 100 kHz is 3.6 and 2 5 \textnV/?{\textHz} , 2 5\,{\text{nV}}/\sqrt {\text{Hz}} , respectively.