Low voltage, low power, compact, high accuracy, high precision PTAT temperature sensor for deep sub-micron CMOS systems

Temperature measurement is becoming increasingly important in integrated circuits and microsystems; nevertheless, existing techniques for the integration of high accuracy, high precision temperature sensors are not optimal for deep submicron CMOS processes. Here we describe a low voltage, low power, compact, high accuracy, high precision temperature sensor for deep sub-micron CMOS systems; our approach takes advantage of charge balancing and charge sharing for low current consumption, does not use resistors for compactness, and takes advantage of both PTAT and autozero techniques for high accuracy and high precision; the circuit can be operated at low supply voltages. As a proof of concept, we report transistor level simulations in a standard 0.13 mu m process; the sensor only sinks about 6 mu A from a 1.2V supply voltage, achieving a power dissipation as low as 7.2 mu W.