Untrimmed Low-Power Thermal Sensor for SoC in 22 nm Digital Fabrication Technology

Abstract

Thermal sensors (TS) are essential for achieving optimized performance and reliability in the era of nanoscale microprocessor and system on chip (SoC). Compiling with the low-power and small die area of the mobile computing, the presented TS supports a wide range of sampling frequencies with an optimized power envelope. The TS supports up to 45 K samples/s, low average power consumption, as low as 20 μW, and small core Si area of 0.013 mm2. Advanced circuit techniques are used in order to overcome process variability, ensuring inaccuracy lower than ±2 °C without any calibration. All this makes the presented thermal sensor a cost-effective, low-power solution for 22 nm nanoscale digital process technology.

Keywords

• thermal sensor
• sigma-delta Analog to Digital Converter (ADC)
• low-power
• untrimmed temperature sensor
• nanoscale digital process