Bitline GND sensing technique for low-voltage operation FeRAM

In this sensing technique, pMOS charge transfer maintains the bitline level near the GND when the plate line goes high. It gives 0.5-V higher readout voltages across the cell capacitors and enables a 0.4-V higher differential amplitude in a 512-cell per bitline structure compared with the conventional high-impedance bitline sensing technique. Using the shifted bias plate line layout, only eight cells and eight sense amplifiers per cell mat are activated, and simulations show 8.06 mW at 3 V and 5 MHz, which is about the same power consumption as the conventional device.

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