HIGH PERFORMANCE ATTO-AMPERE CURRENT MIRROR CIRCUIT

RAKESH KUMAR(2012CRF2515) Abstract - This paper is proposed to produce atto-ampere (10^-18 A) current mirror circuit , by doing so this current mirror circuit will become best choice for the Ultra low power low voltage (ULPVL) application. In simple current mirror circuit we use gate voltage modulation but here we will use source voltage modulation . For validation of this proposed current mirror circuit we are simulating on PSPICE . Keywords - current mirror , source voltage modulation , low voltage , atto-ampere. Introduction:- Due to increasing application of C-MOS low current mode circuit in area such as research , Biosensor , ultra low power current processor this circuit finds very useful place. For low power circuit power consumption is decreased by lowering the power supply, but by lowering power supply limits voltage dynamic range and introduces some other constraints to the circuit design also. By doing this we can lower voltage upto tenth of 1 volt, hence this also does help us more. Other method to lowering power consumption is by decreasing current, but decreasing current degrades the circuit frequency response characteristics. So increasing demands of low voltage, low power consumption femto or atto-ampere current mode circuit play an important role in this area. But question is how can we make such type of circuit which can give so such small amount of current and still be able to build reliable circuit. We know the smallest MOS current is limited by its leakage current and this leakage current is combination of gate, channel , source and drain diode current. To keep gate leakage current in the order of atto-ampere we use silicon oxide layer. In paper [1]-[4] there are several methods are proposed for current down to femto ampere order. In paper [3] and [4] the circuit requires more peripheral to provide the circuit biasing which requires larger area and power. But the proposed circuit in this paper uses source voltage modulation instead of gate voltage modulation by doing this we gate excessive low current in the order of atto- ampere without any extra biasing with power supply 2 volt.

References [1] Lei Zhang, Zhiping Yu, and Xiangqing He,

"Circuit Design andVerification of On-chip Femtoampere Current Mode Circuit Using0.18 um CMOS Technology," in IEEE, 2006. [2] Bernab Linares-Barranco and Teresa SerranoGotarredona, "On theDesign and Characterization of Femtoampere Current-Mode Circuits," ieee journal of solid-state circuits, vol. 38, no. 8, pp. 1353-1363, Aug. 2003. [3] Bernab Linares-Barranco and Teresa SerranoGotarredona, "ReliableHandling of Fempto-Ampere Currents in Standard CMOS,"ESSCIRC, pp. 109-112, 2002. [4] Bernabe Linares-Barranco, Teresa SerranoGotarredona,Rafael