Subthreshold darlington pair based NBTI sensor for reliable CMOS circuits

Abstract

This paper presents a novel subthreshold Darlington pair based negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) monitoring sensor under the stress conditions. The Darlington pair used in the circuit provides the stability of the circuit and the high input impedance of the circuit makes it less affected by the PVT variations. The proposed sensor provides the high degree of linearity and sensitivity under subthreshold conditions. The sensitivity of the proposed sensor is 8.15 μV/nA and also the sensor is less affected by the process variation and has the deviation of 0.0011 mV at standby leakage current of 30 nA.