A fully-integrated 180 nm CMOS 1.2 v low-dropout regulator for low-power portable applications

Abstract

This paper presents the design and postlayout simulation results of a capacitor-less low dropout (LDO) regulator fully integrated in a low-cost standard 180 nm Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) technology which regulates the output voltage at 1.2 V from a 3.3 to 1.3 V battery over a –40 to 120°C temperature range. To meet with the constraints of system-on-chip (SoC) battery-operated devices, ultralow power (Iq = 8.6 µA) and minimum area consumption (0.109 mm2) are maintained, including a reference voltage Vref = 0.4 V. It uses a high-gain dynamically biased folded-based error amplifier topology optimized for low-voltage operation that achieves an enhanced regulation-fast transient performance trade-off.