A CMOS Low Dropout Voltage Regulator Suitable for Low-Power SoC Applications

This paper presents a CMOS on-chip low-dropout voltage regulator suitable for low-power SoC applications. The LDO is part of a power management unit designed to supply the core of a microcontroller, memory arrays, and analog blocks. Experimental results show that the developed LDO can supply up to 400 mA. When operating in low-power mode the regulator consumes 150 nA and it is still capable of delivering up to 50 mA. The measured undershoot is 22 mV, which is recovered in 9.6 μs, when the load current changes 340 mA in 1 ns. The circuit has been fabricated in 9-metal 28 nm Fully Depleted Silicon on Insulator (FDSOI) process technology and occupies an area of 0.07mm².