A new level shifter is proposed in this paper that mitigates the contention problem between its pull-up and pull-down switches without suffering the delay penalty. Comparing this new one with two conventional shifters (CLS-1 and CLS-2) indicates that CLS-1 and CLS-2 have the delay times which are 308 and 26 slower than the proposed shifter when V_(DDL)/V_(DDH)=0.3 and the fan-out=2, respectively. In addition, the comparison of power-delay products shows CLS-2 consumes 28.5 more energy than the proposed shifter. For the layout area, the proposed shifter needs only 15 more than CLS-2. By comparing the propagation delay times, the power-delay products, and the area overhead, the proposed shifter is considered very suitable to future Very Deep Sub-Micron (VDSM) technologies with low-voltage applications.
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