A CMOS On-Chip High-Precision PVTL Detector

A novel PVTL (Process, Voltage, Temperature, Leakage) detection circuit consisting of four individual detectors is proposed in the investigation.Voltage Variation Detector is composed of a feedback control block comprising multi-stage delay cells using high Vth devices such that 0.5% of VDD variation can be detected.Temperature Detector based on a current to pulse converter is proved to attain high linearity of temperature sensing.PMOS Variation Detector and NMOS Variation Detector are carried out using threshold voltage sensors and ring oscillators, respectively.Thus, all process corners can be clearly differentiated using pulse counts.Leakage Detector is realized by a single-MOSFET leakage current detector.Most of prior leakage detectors compensate for leakage current instead of detecting the precise amount of the leakage current.The proposed leakage detector, however, can accurately detect the leakage current of CMOS transistors, where a Strobe pulse generator is used as a detection switch.Thus, the detection time is predictable.It elevates the reliability of the detection result.The proposed PVTL detector design is implemented using a typical 180 nm CMOS process to justify the performance.Measurement shows that the proposed design is the best of all prior PVTL detectors in terms of accuracy.