CMOS COMPATIBLE TEMPERATURE SENSOR-BASED ON THE LATERAL BIPOLAR-TRANSISTOR FOR VERY WIDE TEMPERATURE-RANGE APPLICATIONS

A CMOS process compatible wide range temperature sensor that takes adv antage of the lateral bipolar transistor is described. Concerning accu racy, a temperature error of 0.34 degrees C rms in current mode (with an on-chip 2nd-order temperature compensation) and of 1.86 degrees C r ms in voltage mode is the measured performance, without post-fabricati on trimming, of this integrated sensor, over the -50 degrees C to 150 degrees C temperature range. Other important characteristics are the l ow cost, the less than 1 mW power consumption, the higher than 40 dB P SRR, the relatively small surface, and the output signal swing which i s intrinsically referenced to the temperature range, being specially c onditioned for analog to digital conversion in both current and voltag e modes. The characteristics of this sensor make it especially suitabl e for low-cost high-volume integrated microsystems over a wide range o f fields, such as automotive, space, oil prospecting, biomedical, etc. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.