High-performance wide-VDDH-range level converter for mixed-signal systems

Abstract

A high-performance wide-VDDH-range level converter (LC) is presented for mixed-signal systems. The proposed LC achieves a low power-delay product over a wide range of VDDH with VDDL in the near-threshold region. The proposed LC uses a feed-forward signal to pull down the output voltage at low VDDH, without increasing the size of the nMOS diode for the pseudo-VDDL. A comparison with conventional LCs shows that the proposed LC not only supports high VDDH but is also robust at low VDDH while exhibiting high performance.