Leakage-based On-Chip Thermal Sensor for CMOS Technology

Thermal characterization of ICs and on-chip temperature monitoring have become key tasks in electronic engineering. In this paper, we present the design of an on-chip CMOS temperature sensor based on the temperature dependent characteristics of the subthreshold current. The proposed sensor achieves high accuracy sensing (0.56 degC maximum error), wide temperature range (25-90 degC), and extremely low area (0.010 mm²) and power overhead (18 muW). Our approach improves previous works on on-chip temperature sensors and is highly suitable for portable applications where temperature monitoring achieves great importance.