Ultra-low-voltage boosted driver for self-powered systems

This paper deals with the ultra low-voltage design and application of an inverter-based driver. In order to ensure a reliable value of the overdrive voltage for transistors, the topology based on a boosting technique was used. The driver was designed in 130 nm CMOS technology and verified by simulations including technology corners and measurement of prototyped chips. The whole boosted driver achieves energy consumption of 92.12 μW for the load capacitor of 100 pF. Due to the low-power consumption and promising measured propagation delay, the designed driver was successfully implemented in a self-powered dynamic threshold charge pump. To ensure the reliable start-up, the minimum precharging voltage of the output capacitor has been investigated. The start-up conditions and achieved parameters were verified by measurement and compared to other related works. The optimum point for reliable start of the charge pump has been observed for the clock frequency of about 160 kHz, where the minimum start-up voltage of 126 mV is needed. In such a case, the start-up time is 1.05 ms and the output voltage of 379 mV will be reached.