A 10 nA Ultra-Low Quiescent Current and 60 ns Fast Transient Response Low-Dropout Regulator for Internet-of-Things

• Published in: IEEE transactions on circuits and systems. I, Regular papers Vol. 69; no. 1; pp. 139 - 147
• Main Authors: Huang, Jia-Rui, Wen, Yong-Hwa, Yang, Tzu-Hsien, Lee, Jia-Jyun, Liu, Guan-Ting, Chen, Ke-Horng, Lin, Ying-Hsi, Lin, Shian-Ru, Tsai, Tsung-Yen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.01.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Adaptive control; Current comparators; Electronic devices; Error compensation; fast transient response; Internet of Things; Logic gates; Low dropout regulator (LDO); low quiescent current; MOSFET; Recovery time; Regulators; Steady-state; Time measurement; Transient analysis; Transient response; Voltage control
• ISSN: 1549-8328; 1558-0806
• DOI: 10.1109/TCSI.2021.3093057

Ultra-low quiescent current (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">I_{Q} </tex-math></inline-formula>) low-dropout regulator is the only solution for compact size Internet of Things (IoT) electronic devices. This paper presents an ultra-low <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">I_{Q} </tex-math></inline-formula> low dropout regulator, including low <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">I_{Q} </tex-math></inline-formula> error amplifier (EA) compensated by the adaptive current control (ACC), low leakage feedback network, low <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">I_{Q} </tex-math></inline-formula> current comparator, analog transient enhancement (ATE), and digital transient enhancement (DTE). The chip was fabricated in a standard <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">0.5~\mu \text{m} </tex-math></inline-formula> CMOS process. Measurement results show the current peak efficiency of the LDO is as high as 99.99%. Besides, owing to ATE and DTE circuits, when the load current changes from 1mA to 50mA with a 10 ns edge time, the measured undershoot and overshoot voltages are 75 mV and 50 mV, respectively, with the recovery time (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">T_{R} </tex-math></inline-formula>) of 60 ns and 80 ns, respectively, where the best 0.003 ps FoM is achieved.