Near-/Sub-V<inf>th</inf> process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) sensors with dynamic voltage selection

Abstract

A process, voltage and temperature (PVT) sensors with dynamic voltage selection are proposed for environmental management in the ultra-low voltage dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) system. The process and voltage (PV) sensors initially monitor the process variation. With known process information, PV sensors can real-time provide voltage variation status. The temperature sensor has six temperature sensitive ring oscillators (TSROs) generating frequency proportional to temperature. It dynamically selects the proper TSRO to convert the frequency into digital readings according to voltage status provided by PV sensors. With known process and voltage information from PV sensors, a pure temperature measurement result can be obtained. The proposed PVT sensors are designed in TSMC 65nm CMOS technology. This work can be dynamically operated over an ultra-low voltage range from 0.25V to 0.5V. Only 2.3μW is consumed at 0.25V. They can achieve 0.15 C resolution and 50k samples/sec conversion rate.