A low-voltage low-power threshold voltage monitor for CMOS process sensing

摘要

In this paper a low-voltage low-power threshold voltage monitor for CMOS process sensing is presented. This circuit works in weak inversion and it can be used as an elementary circuit block for on-chip compensation of the intra-die or inter-die threshold voltage variations in low-power analog and mixed-signal SoC, since it is robust to temperature and power supply voltage variations (similar to the bandgap voltage reference). The proposed threshold voltage monitor has been successfully verified in a standard 0.35-μm n-well CMOS TSMC process. Experimental results have confirmed that the circuit generates an average reference voltage of 758 mV (very close to the typical threshold voltage when extrapolated to absolute zero) for a 950 mV power supply voltage, with a variation of 39 ppm/°C for the −20 to 80°C temperature range.