Low threshold CMOS circuits with low standby current

Abstract

Multi-Voltage CMOS (MVCMOS) is a design methodology for very low power supply voltages that uses low-threshold transistors in series with the supply rails. The control voltages on the gating transistors need to be outside of the V/sub dd/-V/sub ss/ range (hence the name MVCMOS) in order to reduce the standby current, but the resulting circuits operate at lower supply voltages and have a lower area overhead than the previously proposed Multi-Threshold CMOS (MTCMOS).