A 210 nW NPN-Based Temperature Sensor With an Inaccuracy of ±0.15 °C (3σ) From −15 °C to 85 °C Utilizing Dual-Mode Frontend
Teruki Someya (TU Delft - Electronic Instrumentation)
Vincent Van Hoek (Student TU Delft)
Jan Angevare (TU Delft - Electronic Instrumentation)
S. Pan (TU Delft - Electronic Instrumentation)
Kofi A. Makinwa (TU Delft - Microelectronics)
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Abstract
This letter describes an NPN-based temperature sensor that achieves a 1-point trimmed inaccuracy of ±0.15 °C (3σ) from -15 to 85 °C while dissipating only 210 nW. It uses a dual-mode frontend to roughly halve the power consumption of conventional frontends. First, two NPNs are used to generate a well-defined PTAT bias current, then this current is sampled and applied to the same NPNs to generate well-defined PTAT and CTAT voltages. These voltages are then applied to a low-power tracking ΔΣ modulator-based ADC, which employs a digital filter to efficiently generate a multibit representation of temperature. A prototype fabricated in a 180-nm BCD process achieves 15-mK resolution in a 50 ms conversion time, which translates into a state-of-the-art resolution FoM of 2.3 pJK2.