Ultra-Low-Power Voltage References: Exploring picowatt-level design using CMOS and hybrid architectures
Chutham Sawigun, Xiaolin Yang, Carolina Mora López
Abstract
Voltage references (VRs) play a crucial role in the PMUs of electronic systems, providing a stable voltage regardless of process variations, supply voltage fluctuations, and temperature changes. The BGR has been widely employed as a reliable VR since the 1980s <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[1]</xref> , delivering approximately 1.2 V based on the silicon bandgap voltage ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">V</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">BG</sub> ). However, designing a low-power and compact BGR presents challenges because of the power–area tradeoff <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[2]</xref> .