A Fast and Low-power Level Shifter Based on Improved Stack-based Cross-Coupled Structure for Low-power and IoT Applications

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Electrical Engineering Shahed University Tehran, Iran

Abstract

This paper presents a low-power and fast voltage level shifter that can convert sub-threshold logic levels to the conventional level of target technology. The proposed design performs fast and low-power operations due to the improved stacked-based cross-coupled structure. In order to reduce the power consumption caused by the short-circuit current at the output driver stage, the output inverter is modified to have phase-changed inputs on PMOS and NMOS transistor gates. Additional diode-connected transistors in the feedback loop are used to reduce the voltage swings in the feedback loop, and to make a difference between the on and off time of the output transistors. Post-layout simulation results on standard 180 nm CMOS technology show that the proposed level shifter can convert 0.4V to 1.8V at a frequency of 1MHz with a power consumption of 89.23nW and a propagation delay of 23.68ns correctly. The proposed design is suitable for Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensor tags due its low-power and converted voltage levels with emphasis on the boundary of low-voltage low-power and normal-voltage high-performance sub-units.

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History

  • Receive Date: 02 January 2020
  • Revise Date: 13 November 2012
  • Accept Date: 30 May 2021
  • First Publish Date: 23 July 2021

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