An On-Chip PVT Compensation Technique with Current Monitoring Circuit for Low-Voltage CMOS Digital LSIs

Yusuke TSUGITA  Ken UENO  Tetsuya HIROSE  Tetsuya ASAI  Yoshihito AMEMIYA 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics  Vol.E93-C  No.6  pp.835-841
Publication Date: 2010/06/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1353
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Analog Circuits and Related SoC Integration Technologies)
Category: 
Keyword: 
digital circuits,  threshold voltage variation,  compensation circuit,  PVT variation, 

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Summary: 
An on-chip process, supply voltage, and temperature (PVT) compensation technique for low-voltage CMOS digital circuits was proposed. Because the degradation of circuit performance originates from the variation of the saturation current in transistors, we developed a compensation circuit consisting of a reference current that is independent of PVT variations. The circuit is operated so that the saturation current in digital circuits is equal to the reference current. The operations of the circuit were confirmed by SPICE simulation with a set of 0.35-µm standard CMOS parameters. Monte Carlo simulations showed that the proposed technique effectively improves circuit performance by 71%. The circuit is useful for on-chip compensation to mitigate the degradation of circuit performance with PVT variation in low-voltage digital circuits.