Leakage, Area, and Headroom Tradeoffs for Scattered Relative Temperature Sensor Front-End Architectures

In this brief, several interface structures between sensor nodes and the core, including a tree multiplexer (MUX), a row-column selection MUX, and a tree-column selection MUX, are investigated for a scattered temperature sensor. The occupied area, leakage current, measurement error, and headroom have been studied. It is shown that different structures significantly differ on performance. Tradeoffs among leakage current, area, and headroom for each structure are studied and analyzed in detail. A design guide for various performance requirements is provided. It is shown that leakage current can be significantly reduced by the tree MUX. The minimum area and headroom consumption can be achieved by the row-column selection MUX. The proposed tree-column selection MUX can trade the accuracy for headroom and area overhead.