A Highly Power- and Area-Efficient PMU for Cell-Size Autonomous Microsystems

Power Management Units (PMU) are present in most electronic devices today. However, for power and area constrained applications, their design becomes a real challenge, especially when cell-sized autonomous microsystems are targeted. This paper presents an LDO regulator and a voltage reference, which are usually a must in any PMU, for autonomous microsystems fabricated in 65 nm CMOS technology. This PMU has been designed to minimize quiescent power and area, consuming a minimum power of 15.6 nW and occupying only 391 μm2 , while being able to deliver up to 40 μA to the load. No significant degradation was observed, as the measured line regulation is 0.173%/V, the temperature coefficient is 128.4 ppm/ ∘ C over a very wide temperature range going from 0 ∘ C up to 120 ∘ C, and the PSR at low frequencies is − 67.1 dB.