A New Circuit-Level Technique for Leakage and Short-Circuit Power Reduction of Static Logic Gates in 22-nm CMOS Technology

Abstract

The leakage power, a.k.a. static power, increases in deep-submicron technologies due to short-channel effects. This article proposes a novel input-controlled leakage restrainer transistor (ICLRT)-based technique to reduce leakage power as well as the short-circuit power. The main idea is to place a PMOS and an NMOS ICLRT on top of the pull-up network (PUN) and at the bottom of the pull-down network (PDN), respectively, on all paths from either the supply voltage or the ground to the output. The ICLRTs are deliberately used as a stack structure while being controlled by the input signals to lead the output to stronger low and high logic levels. In fact, the proposed technique reduces the leakage and short-circuit currents and, consequently, powers by increasing the threshold voltage and decreasing the gate-source voltage of the main transistors. Using the proposed technique, logical NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR, and XNOR static gates are designed and evaluated by SPICE simulations in 22-nm BSIM4 (level-54 parameters) CMOS technology. Simulation results with 0.9-V power supply voltage show that power–delay product (PDP) is reduced by 27.66%, 16.7%, and 21.58% for NOT, NOR, and XOR with respect to its best counterpart and by 32.62%, 47%, 49.23%, and 38.77% for NOT, NAND, NOR, and XOR with respect to the conventional static CMOS structures. Furthermore, Monte Carlo analysis is also performed to ensure the stability and robustness of the circuit’s performance in the presence of the process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations.