A Resistorless Low-Power Voltage Reference

A novel low-power temperature-stable voltage reference without resistors is presented in this brief, which is compatible with standard CMOS technology. In order to reduce the temperature nonlinearity in the proposed voltage reference, threshold voltage and a proportional-to-absolute-temperature voltage form the basic linear-temperature components, which are achieved by resistorless threshold voltage extractor and asymmetric differential difference amplifier. Moreover, a self-biased current source with feedback is used to provide stable bias currents for the whole voltage reference, which can improve the power-supply noise attenuation (PSNA) with reduced current mirror errors. Verification results of the proposed voltage reference implemented with 0.18-mu m CMOS technology demonstrate that the temperature coefficient of 14.1 ppm/degrees C with a temperature range of -20 degrees C to 80 degrees C is obtained at 1.35-V power supply, and a PSNA of 75.7 dB is achieved without any filtering capacitor while dissipating a maximum supply current of 880 nA. The active area is 115 mu m x 130 mu m.