A 0.6 <i>V_IN</i> 100 mV Dropout Capacitor-Less LDO with 220 nA <i>I_Q</i> for Energy Harvesting System

Abstract

A fully integrated and high-efficiency low-dropout regulator (LDO) with 100 mV dropout voltage and nA-level quiescent current for energy harvesting has been proposed and simulated in the 180 nm CMOS process in this paper. A bulk modulation without an extra amplifier is proposed, which decreases the threshold voltage, lowering the dropout voltage and supply voltage to 100 mV and 0.6 V, respectively. To ensure stability and realize low current consumption, adaptive power transistors are proposed to enable system tropology to alter between 2-stage and 3-stage. In addition, an adaptive bias with bounds is utilized in an attempt to improve the transient response. Simulation results demonstrate that the quiescent current is as low as 220 nA and the current efficiency reaches 99.958% in the full load condition, load regulation is 0.0059 mV/mA, line regulation is 0.4879 mV/V, and the optimal PSR is −51 dB.

Keywords

• low-dropout regulator
• ultra-low-input voltage
• high power efficiency
• bulk modulation
• energy harvesting