A novel tunable bandgap voltage and current reference generation circuit

Abstract

This paper presents a CMOS based tunable bandgap voltage and current reference generation circuit. The proposed circuit is designed without using Bipolar Junction Transistors (BJTs) for Proportional-To-Absolute-Temperature and Complementary-To-Absolute-Temperature generation, thus eliminating the problem of implementing BJT in CMOS fabrication process. The proposed circuit is simulated in standard 180 nm CMOS technology. A constant reference voltage ( $$V_{ref}$$ ) from 850 mV to 1.14 V and a constant reference current ( $$I_{ref}$$ ) from 170 to 227 nA is generated for corresponding supply voltage ( $$V_{dd}$$ ) tuned from 1.5 to 2 V for low power applications with an extended temperature range from − 55 to 175 $$^{\circ }$$ C. The proposed circuit at $$V_{dd}$$ = 1.8 V has a Temperature Coefficient (TC) of 0.37 and 0.53 ppm/ $$^{\circ }$$ C for $$V_{ref}$$ and $$I_{ref}$$ respectively, with a total power consumption of 594 nW (at $$V_{ref}$$ = 1.02 V and $$I_{ref}$$ = 204.5 nA). A monte-carlo simulation of the design is done for 1000 samples. The monte-carlo simulation for $$\hbox {V}_{{ref}}$$ , $$\hbox {I}_{{ref}}$$ and TC is done across the $$\hbox {V}_{{dd}}$$ (i.e. $$\hbox {V}_{{dd}} = 2\,\hbox {V}$$ to 1.5 V).