Linear vt-based temperature sensors with low process sensitivity and improved power supply headroom

A new on-die temperature sensor that operates at low supply voltages and exhibits low process sensitivity and good linearity over a wide temperature range is introduced. When compared to conventional structures which have limited supply voltage headroom at the slow-n process corner, the new structures have sufficient headroom to practically operate well over all process corners. When implemented in a TSMC 0.1 Sum process with a nominal supply voltage of 1.8V, simulation results show the maximum temperature linearity error is reduced from 1.5°C to less than 0.3°C at the NMOS slow process corner and with negative 10% Vdd variation.