A 1-V MULTITHRESHOLD-VOLTAGE CMOS DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSOR FOR MOBILEPHONE APPLICATION

A 1-V power supply low-power and high-speed 16-b fixed-point digital s ignal processor using a 0.5-mu m process has been developed for mobile phone applications, A 1-V multithreshold-voltage CMOS (MTCMOS) techno logy that uses both high-threshold-voltage and low-threshold-voltage t ransistors is one key to attaining low power consumption with keeping processing throughput high, A maximum operating frequency of 13.2 MHz and an energy consumption of 2.2 mW/MHz were achieved at 1 V, The seco nd key to low-power operation is a power management scheme that uses a secondary embedded microprocessor, This proposed scheme minimizes the standby power in the waiting state by effectively controlling the sle ep mode in the MTCMOS design. We confirmed that the standby leakage cu rrent was reduced three orders of magnitude and that the energy consum ed in the waiting state was less than 1/10 of that consumed by convent ional CMOS circuits with lowered supply voltage and threshold voltage but without power management.