Novel wide voltage range level shifter for near-threshold designs

This paper presents a novel low-to-high level shifter that enables having voltage domains with substantially different supply voltages from near-threshold to full supply voltage. The level shifter was designed in a 90 nm CMOS technology and uses thick-oxide transistors, non-minimum channel length transistors, along with novel circuit structures to up convert from 0.36 V to 1.32 V and all the voltage levels in between for all process corners and the temperature range of [0°C - 125°C]. Relaxing the temperature operating range to [25°C - 125°C], the level shifter works deep into the sub threshold region capable of up converting from 0.31 V to 1.32 V. For the typical case operating condition, the proposed level shifter has an unprecedented performance of 1.5 ns while up converting 0.36 V to 1.32 V.