A 0.0016 mm² 0.64 nJ leakage-based CMOS temperature sensor

This paper presents a CMOS temperature sensor based on the thermal dependencies of the leakage currents targeting the 65 nm node. To compensate for the effect of process fluctuations, the proposed sensor realizes the ratio of two measures of the time it takes a capacitor to discharge through a transistor in the subthreshold regime. Furthermore, a novel charging mechanism for the capacitor is proposed to further increase the robustness against fabrication variability. The sensor, including digitization and interfacing, occupies 0.0016 mm² and has an energy consumption of 47.7-633 pJ per sample. The resolution of the sensor is 0.28 °C, and the 3σ inaccuracy over the range 40-110 °C is 1.17 °C.