Design of a trimmed current reference with a low temperature drift

Component tolerances and mismatches due to process variations severely degrade the performance of bandgap reference circuits. Based on device mismatch models, a current reference I_ref with adjustable output current from 15μA to 80μA is designed. A compensated circuit is used to reduce the temperature drift. To achieve more accurate current reference, an 8bit bi-directional trimming array with 127 current levels is proposed. This digitally programmable array is binary weighted for accuracy and flexibility. Simulation shows that the temperature coefficient is 26ppm/℃ over the wide range of -40℃ to 120℃when the output current is 15μA. Based on the CMOS 0.13μm technology, the measurement results show that the trimmed range and precision for current reference are -14.3％·I_ref～14.3％·I_ref and 0.11％·I_ref, respectively. The circuit could be applied to high precision A/D and D/A converters.