Design Toolbox for sub-Nanoampere CMOS Programmable Voltage References

A design toolbox based on Matlab-Spectre co-simulation for the automatic design of sub-nanoampere programmable voltage references is proposed. Starting from the MOS devices available in a selected technology, the tool sizes all possible voltage references, for a 3T architecture, minimizing inaccuracy and temperature coefficient, for a given current consumption and power supply rejection. From the best 3T reference, a programmable reference is designed to generate the supply voltage for low power microprocessors with dynamic supply scaling. Our programmable reference achieves a minimum current consumption of 250 pA, with an output voltage range from 0.5 V to 0.95 V. Tested on a 130-nm node, the tool reduces simulator license usage by more than a factor of 1000.