Ultra-Low-Power Voltage References: Exploring picowatt-level design using CMOS and hybrid architectures

Voltage references (VRs) play a crucial role in the PMUs of electronic systems, providing a stable voltage regardless of process variations, supply voltage fluctuations, and temperature changes. The BGR has been widely employed as a reliable VR since the 1980s
[1]
, delivering approximately 1.2 V based on the silicon bandgap voltage (
V
_BG
). However, designing a low-power and compact BGR presents challenges because of the power–area tradeoff
[2]
.