A Low-Power CMOS Temperature Sensor for On-Chip Thermal Gradient Detection

In this paper, a low-power CMOS temperature sensor based on a diode-connected NMOS FET is proposed. A sub-1V voltage reference is adopted to generate a temperature-invariant current source to bias the sensor device. The temperature sensing NMOS transistor is sized to maximize the temperature sensitivity. The proposed design is simulated based on 90 nm CMOS process technology, which shows temperature sensitivity of 0.25 mV/⁰C with a temperature range of from 0⁰C to 100⁰C.