A low-voltage, bulk-driven MOSFET current mirror for CMOS technology

A bulk-driven, MOSFET current mirror is described which is capable of operating at power supplies down to 1 V using standard CMOS technologies with threshold voltages in the range of /spl plusmn/0.8 V. The bulk-driven MOSFET configuration removes the requirement that the input voltage of the current mirror equal V/sub GS/>V/sub T/. At V/sub DD//V/sub SS/ of+0.75 V/-0.75 V, measurements on simple current mirrors using this new technique require only about 0.1 V across the input device of the current mirror circuit and exhibit saturation voltages on the output device of the current mirror comparable to that of standard simple current mirrors. The operation and first-order models for the bulk-driven MOSFET are presented in this paper along with the operation and experimental results of a simple, bulk-driven mirror.