A 0.6-V Output, 10-mA Low-Dropout Regulator With Feedback Resistors Shared by an Integrated Single-BJT Voltage Reference

This brief presents a fully integrated, low-voltage, low-power, low-dropout regulator (LDO) that employs feedback resistors shared by a single BJT-based voltage reference (VR). The proposed architecture utilizes only one BJT and two resistors to generate a temperature-compensated and regulated output voltage compared to conventional reference-integrated voltage regulators that require multiple BJTs and resistors. Additionally, by reducing the emitter-base voltage of the BJT to half through a voltage divider circuit, the design achieves sub-1 V operation. Hence, the proposed LDO offers both area and power efficiency. The design was fabricated in 65-nm CMOS technology and occupies an area of 0.017 mm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup>. The LDO delivers a maximum load current of 10 mA at a nominal output voltage of 0.608 V. Measurement results show that the proposed LDO achieves a temperature coefficient (TC) of 26.2 ppm/°C from −40 °C to 120 °C, and a voltage precision (σ/μ) of 0.499%. The measured line and load regulation are 3.925 mV/V and 0.12 mV/mA, respectively. The LDO consumes 241 nW of power under a 0.8 V minimum supply. We achieve a figure-of-merit (FoM<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">TV</sub>) of 40.6 fs.