TECHNICAL PAPER A 0.6 V 117 nW high performance energy efficient system-on-chip (SoC) CMOS temperature sensor in 0.18 lm CMOS for aerospace applications Deepak Prasad 1 • Vijay Nath 1 • Vedam Vishwanthan 2 • Manish Mehta 2 Received: 20 August 2018 / Accepted: 25 August 2018 Ó Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract This research article presents and describes a novel design with improved performance low power consumption threshold voltage based CMOS thermal sensor for aerospace applications. The proposed temperature sensor utilizes the change in behavior of threshold voltage of MOSFET with variation in temperature. The challenge while designing the temperature sensor was to achieve the linearize output voltage with respect to change in temperature. Process corner analysis has been done to check the robustness of the circuit while performance analysis and sensitivity of the temperature sensor have been verified in the occurrence of parasitic. The proposed temperature sensor is featured with low power consumption, less power supply voltage utilization, high performance and sensitivity with inaccuracy as low as possible. The presented temperature sensor utilizes an active area of 18 lm 9 9.85 lm with 117 nW power consumption. An improved linear performance with an inaccuracy of merely - 0.01 to ? 0.47 °C over a wide temperature range of - 20 to ? 120 °C is presented here. The sensitivity of proposed temperature sensor is found to be as high as 0.77 mV/°C. The proposed temperature sensor is realized and tested in Cadence virtuoso mixed signal design atmosphere using 0.18 lm CMOS technology and further investigated with support of tool from Mentor graphics. The engaged area of pad-limited chip is measured to be 0.96 mm 2 . 1 Introduction Continuously rise in integration of transistors on a single chip requires constant thermal monitoring to avoid any thermal damage. Generally commercial aircraft flies at an approximate altitude of 30,000 feet where they endures great environmental variability, here the surface of aircraft experience a huge change in temperature, ranges from - 40 to ? 80 °C. Other applications in this area like radar jamming system, joint air to ground missile, joint direct attack munitions smart bombs, armored vehicles operate across a broad temperature range. Here, in these areas, the temperature sensor is required to be integrated into mili- tary, avionic and commercial aircraft systems to reduce causality (Knoth 2010). Continuous thermal monitoring of windshields, brakes, air ducts, cabin, hydraulic lines and inter stage turbine not only trims the chances of mishap but also increases the durability and reliability of correspond- ing component. Furthermore, it also rescue the consump- tion of power due to self-heating of an electronic system. By continuous monitoring of temperature of an elec- tronic system not only increases the life duration of that system but also trims the chances of any mishap (Prasad and Nath 2017). Furthermore, it is also necessary to monitor continuously as self-heating in a system consumes more power. The application of temperature sensor is not limited to this but also for low power portable devices, communication devices, laptops, house hold equipments, office automations, business equipments, defense, motor- vehicles, trains, aero vehicles, space applications, satellite navigations, biomedical instrumentations etc. Many dif- ferent approaches were done to design temperature sensor out of which Bipolar junction transistor based temperature & Deepak Prasad prasaddeepak007@gmail.com Vijay Nath vijaynath@bitmesra.ac.in 1 Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand 835215, India 2 Department of Space, Space Application Centre, Indian Space Research Organization, Ahmedabad, India 123 Microsystem Technologies https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-018-4115-8