A novel method for generating a low temperature coefficient (TC) reference voltage from high TC reference cells to achieve wide temperature stability for remote sensors

This paper presents a novel functional block level abstraction for generating a stable reference voltage over a wide temperature range. The proposed method uses multiple high temperature coefficient (TC) reference sources to generates a low TC voltage. The proposed approach is demonstrated using four BiCMOS voltage reference cells, with 26.6ppm/C TC as an example to achieve 1.24ppm/C TC over a temperature range from -35°C to 160°C which is about 95% decrease in TC as per the simulated values. The proposed solution can be scaled to employ multiple cost effective, non-ideal reference voltage generators with high TC and shorter temperature range, to produce a reference voltage with a low TC over wider temperature range for various applications including bionics and deep space vehicles.