One-Shot Voltage-Measurement Circuit Utilizing Process Variation

Takumi UEZONO  Takashi SATO  Kazuya MASU  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E92-A   No.4   pp.1024-1030
Publication Date: 2009/04/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
DOI: 10.1587/transfun.E92.A.1024
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Advanced Technologies Emerging Mainly from the 21st Workshop on Circuits and Systems in Karuizawa)
Category: 
Keyword: 
voltage measurement,  process variation,  power/signal integrity,  

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Summary: 
A novel voltage measurement circuit which utilizes process variation is proposed. Using the proposed circuit, the voltage of a nonperiodic waveform at a particular time point can be accurately captured by a single clock pulse (one-shot measurement). The proposed circuit can be designed without compensation circuits against process variation, and thus occupies only a small area. An analytical expression of offset voltage for the comparator utilizing process variation (UPV-comparator), which plays a key role in the proposed circuit, is derived and design considerations for the proposed circuit are discussed. The circuit operation is confirmed through SPICE simulation using 90 nm CMOS device models. The -0.04 and -3 dB bandwidths (99% and 50% amplitudes) of the proposed circuit are about 10 MHz and far over 1 GHz, respectively. The circuit area is also estimated using an experimental layout.