Low voltage current reference circuit with low temperature coefficient

Current references are necessary building blocks of every integrated circuit where they are used for biasing analog circuits such as filters, oscillators, phase locked loops, etc. This paper describes the design of a low voltage, low power 10 nA current reference. The proposed current reference circuit is based on a simple design methodology which uses the principle of subtraction of two positive temperature coefficient currents. The circuit is made to operate in sub-threshold region with a supply voltage of 0.5 V. The proposed circuit has been designed and simulated in Cadence Virtuoso with gpdk 180-nm CMOS process. The temperature coefficient of the reference current is 186 ppm/° C over a range from 0 to 80° C and the variation with supply voltage is 8.02%/V. The total power consumption of the circuit is as low as 45.887 nW.

[1]  S. Chouhan,et al.  Ultra low power beta multiplier-based current reference circuit , 2017 .

[2]  J. Fellrath,et al.  CMOS analog integrated circuits based on weak inversion operations , 1977 .

[3]  C.-H. Lee,et al.  All-CMOS temperature independent current reference , 1996 .

[4]  Willy Sansen,et al.  A CMOS temperature-compensated current reference , 1988 .

[5]  Christofer Toumazou,et al.  A resistorless low current reference circuit for implantable devices , 2002, 2002 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems. Proceedings (Cat. No.02CH37353).

[6]  Paolo Stefano Crovetti,et al.  A new compact temperature-compensated CMOS current reference , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

[7]  H. Oguey,et al.  CMOS Current Reference without Resistance , 1996, ESSCIRC '96: Proceedings of the 22nd European Solid-State Circuits Conference.

[8]  Franziska Hoffmann,et al.  Design Of Analog Cmos Integrated Circuits , 2016 .