An ultra-low leakage energy efficient level shifter with wide conversion range

Abstract

An ultra-low leakage energy efficient level shifter that can convert extremely low input voltage into the supply voltage level is presented in this paper. In order to reduce the leakage power dissipation, the super-cut-off mechanism and MTCMOS technique are utilized in the proposed structure. At the same time, a positive feedback circuit is inserted to avoid the loss of performance. Post-layout simulation results in a 55-nm MTCMOS process demonstrate that for the voltage level conversion from 0.3 V to 1.2 V, the proposed level shifter exhibits a propagation delay of 70.77 ns and an energy per transition of 89.55 fJ for input frequency of 1 MHz. Meanwhile, the static power of the proposed level shifter is as low as 27.82 pW. The proposed level shifter only occupies 7.79 um², which demonstrates prominent area efficiency.