An accurate current reference using temperature and process compensation current mirror

Abstract

In this paper, an accurate current reference using temperature and process compensation current mirror (TPC-CM) is proposed. The temperature independent reference current is generated by summing a proportional to absolute temperature (PTAT) current and a complementary to absolute temperature (CTAT) current. The temperature coefficient and magnitude of the reference current are influenced by the process variation. To calibrate the process variation, the proposed TPC-CM uses two binary weighted current mirrors which control the temperature coefficient and magnitude of the reference current. After the PTAT and CTAT currents are measured, the switch codes of the TPC-CM are fixed in order that the magnitude of reference current is independent to temperature. And, the codes are stored in the non-volatile memory. In the simulation, the effect of the process variation is reduced to 0.52% from 19.7% after the calibration using a TPC-CM in chip-by-chip. A current reference chip is fabricated with a 3.3V 0.35um CMOS process. The measured calibrated reference current has 0.42% variation.