A Self-Regulated Reference Generator with Picowatt-VR-Embedded Amplifier Achieving 0.0174%/V LS and -88dB PSRR

This paper introduces a novel compact voltage and current reference circuit, leveraging an enhanced self-cascode MOS voltage reference (VR) that operates as a VR-embedded operational amplifier (opamp) to create a resistor-based V-I converter. Fabricated in 55-nm CMOS, this opamp exhibits minimal power consumption of 144 pW at room temperature, providing a 213.2 nA reference current and a 261.8 mV reference voltage from a 1 V supply, all within a very small $90 \mu \mathrm{~m} \times 130 \mu \mathrm{~m}$ chip area. This design achieves temperature coefficients of 186.2ppm$/{ }^{\circ} \mathrm{C}$ and $232.6 \mathrm{ppm} /{ }^{\circ} \mathrm{C}$ for the voltage and current references, respectively. Moreover, we demonstrate an improvement in line regulation through a single-transistor voltage regulation loop, achieving line sensitivities of $0.0174 \% / \mathrm{V}$ and $0.011 \% / V$ for the voltage and current references, respectively. Significantly, the PSRR of the reference voltage at $\mathbf{1 0 H z}$ shows a 24.6 dB improvement over existing state-of-the-art design.