Smart Temperature Sensor for Thermal Testing of Cell-Based ICs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple, efficient built-in temperature sensor for VLSI circuits that uses complex gates in a ring-oscillator to improve linearity and thermal monitoring accuracy.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel temperature sensor design utilizing complex gates in a ring-oscillator, enhancing linearity and thermal monitoring in cell-based ICs.

Findings

Reduced non-linearity error with optimized gate selection

Simulation confirms effectiveness in 0.18μm CMOS technology

Sensor suitable for thermal testing of VLSI circuits

Abstract

In this paper we present a simple and efficient built-in temperature sensor for thermal monitoring of standard-cell based VLSI circuits. The proposed smart temperature sensor uses a ring-oscillator composed of complex gates instead of inverters to optimize their linearity. Simulation results from a 0.18$\mu$m CMOS technology show that the non-linearity error of the sensor can be reduced when an adequate set of standard logic gates is selected.