Low power /low voltage electronics aims to achieve its goal of decreased power dissipation in both static and active states by using the advancements in the development of materials technology, device technology, circuit technology and architecture, along with overall power management strategies.

Low voltage design is interlinked with low power design in order to obtain circuits with a minimum silicon area, power dissipation, voltage supply and good performance. The design of such circuits requires the use of models that are continuous in all regions of operations including weak inversion, moderate inversion, strong inversion conduction and saturation for the large and small signal variables (currents, transconductances, intrinsic capacitances, non-quasi-static transadmittances and the thermal noise). Using a smaller process, a lower voltage supply, and low power design techniques the designer can reduce the ASIC power consumption while meeting performance requirements.

The trend of shrinking the CMOS processes pushes the analog circuits to operate with less than 3.3V, and new circuits are designed to use 2.5V, 1.5V or even 1V. These low operating voltages bring further challenges to the analog designer to find ways of implementing basic analog building blocks, for example, cascode and folded cascode inverting amplifiers, current mirrors, switched-capacitors filters, multipliers, comparators and data converters that perform well at low voltage power supplies.

Research is directed towards developing design methodologies and analog building blocks that operate at low voltage and are integrated in low power / low voltage microelectronics systems.

For more information contact: Ovidiu Vermesan