CMOS temperature sensor using a resistively degenerated common-source amplifier biased by an adjustable proportional-to-absolute-temperature voltage

Abstract

A high-linearity CMOS temperature sensor with pulse output is presented. The temperature core is a resistively degenerated common-source amplifier which gate is biased by a proportional-to-absolute-temperature (PTAT) voltage generator. The source resistor is made of polysilicon which resistance has a PTAT characteristic. The current flowing through the resistor exhibits a PTAT characteristic with high linearity of 99.99% at least for a temperature range from 0 to 125 °C. The PTAT voltage generator can be adjusted by a bias voltage V b and hence the PTAT current can also be adjusted by the V b. The PTAT current is mirrored to an added current controlled oscillator which output pulse frequencies also exhibit a PTAT characteristic. For the chip using the 0.35 µm process, the plots of measured pulse frequencies against temperature exhibit the sensitivity of 2.30 to 2.24 kHz/°C with linearity of more than 99.99% at the V b of 1 to 1.2 V.