A Sub-μW Digital Temperature Compensation Architecture for Arbitrary Voltage and Current Reference Generation

Traditionally, both reference circuits and the components they supply are designed independently to be as immune to temperature change as practical, but this requires power and area overhead to achieve. These overheads can compound in complex systems or consume excessive portions of a low power budget. In contrast, we propose a sub-μwatt digital temperature compensation architecture that generates voltage and current references with a user-defined temperature response rather than a fixed, near-ideal response. This flexible approach allows a single programmable design to be reused easily to produce different profiles over temperature, reducing design time. It also can reduce the temperature non-linearity in the components it supports by providing an input temperature profile that effectively cancels that non-linear response to allow components to operate at their target spec and eliminate excess power consumption. This approach allows designers to prioritize power consumption in their designs and use this compensation strategy to manage performance across temperature.