Models and Techniques for Temperature Robust Systems on a Reconfigurable Platform

• Main Authors: Sahil Shah, Hakan Toreyin, Jennifer Hasler, Aishwarya Natarajan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2017-08-01
• Series: Journal of Low Power Electronics and Applications
• Subjects: circuits and system; temperature dependence; reference generator; FPAA
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9268/7/3/21

This paper investigates the variability of various circuits and systems over temperature and presents several methods to improve their performance over temperature. The work demonstrates use of large scale reconfigurable System-On-Chip (SOC) for reducing the variability of circuits and systems compiled on a Floating Gate (FG) based Field Programmable Analog Array (FPAA). Temperature dependencies of circuits are modeled using an open-source simulator built in the Scilab/XCOS environment and the results are compared with measurement data obtained from the FPAA. This comparison gives further insight into the temperature dependence of various circuits and signal processing systems and allows us to compensate as well as predict their behavior. Also, the work presents several different current and voltage references that could help in reducing the variability caused due to changes in temperature. These references are standard blocks in the Scilab/Xcos environment that could be easily compiled on the FPAA. An FG based current reference is then used for biasing a 12 × 1 Vector Matrix Multiplication (VMM) circuit and a second order G m − C bandpass filter to demonstrate the compilation and usage of these voltage/current reference in a reconfigurable fabric. The large scale FG FPAA presented here is fabricated in a 350 nm CMOS process.