Abstract
A low-power voltage reference cell for system-on-a-chip applications is presented in this paper. The proposed cell uses a combination of standard transistors and thick-oxide transistors to generate a voltage above 1 V. A design procedure is also presented for minimizing the temperature coefficient (TC) of the reference voltage. This circuit was fabricated in a standard 0.35 μm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process. It generates a 1.52 V output with a TC of 42 ppm/∘C from −70 ∘C to 85 ∘C while consuming only 1.11 μW.
Highlights
Voltage reference circuits are critical building blocks that are used to generate a stable voltage across a wide range of temperatures
Our intended application of a low-power voltage reference cell is within a reconfigurable analog/mixed-signal platform that is capable of synthesizing a wide variety of extremely low-power circuits and systems [7]
Analyzing Equation (18), we can see that the temperature dependence of the resistors and their exact values have little impact on the temperature coefficient (TC); assuming both resistors are made from the same material, their temperature dependencies cancel in the first term
Summary
Voltage reference circuits are critical building blocks that are used to generate a stable voltage across a wide range of temperatures. Many good designs have been developed that provide these sub-1V reference voltages using very low power (e.g., [1,2,3,4,5,6]). Our intended application of a low-power voltage reference cell is within a reconfigurable analog/mixed-signal platform that is capable of synthesizing a wide variety of extremely low-power circuits and systems [7]. Most applications developed on our custom Reconfigurable Analog/Mixed-Signal Processor (RAMP) consume approximately 10–20 μW and are capable of sophisticated processing (e.g., voice-activity detection, speech processing, infrared proximity detection, etc.). While the low-voltage output of a sub-1 V reference could be scaled to the necessary above-1 V value for our application, the additional circuitry necessary to amplify/scale the voltage would add to the overall complexity and power consumption
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