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A Novel Low Delay High-Voltage Level Shifter with Transient Performance Insensitive to Parasitic Capacitance and Transfer Voltage Level

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Abstract

In this paper, a new high-voltage level shifter (HVLS) structure is proposed, which has a significantly improved transient response over existing structures. To overcome signal transfer delay of the conventional HVLS caused by parasitic capacitance due to high-voltage MOSFETs, this structure employs a novel circuit module “inverse Schmitt trigger” to drive the pull-up transistors of conventional HVLS. As a result, the “Miller Plateau” caused by parasitic capacitance can be minimized. Hence, the overall transfer delay of the structure is significantly reduced. The simulation results based on SPECTRE and 0.5 \(\upmu \)m high-voltage CMOS process show that compared to other currently available structures whose transfer delays are several nanoseconds on average, the proposed structure is able to provide a nanosecond transfer delay without using large boost capacitors which are impractical to be integrated or using complex logic units which decrease reliability of circuit. Also, the typical transfer delay of the proposed structure is a constant 1.3 ns, which is irrelevant to parasitic capacitance and insensitive to transfer voltage level.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China under the Grant Number JB150222.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Electronic CAD, Xidian University, Xi’an, China

    Xinquan Lai, Longjie Zhong, Bing Yuan, Qinqin Li, Rui Ding & Jingxiang Zhao

  2. School of Science and Engineering, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA, UK

    Donglai Xu

  3. School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Wuhan Polytechnic University, Wuhan, China

    Donglai Xu

  4. Department of Microelectronics, School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Hongyi Wang

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  1. Xinquan Lai
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  2. Longjie Zhong
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  3. Donglai Xu
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  4. Hongyi Wang
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  5. Bing Yuan
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  7. Rui Ding
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  8. Jingxiang Zhao
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Correspondence to Longjie Zhong.

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Lai, X., Zhong, L., Xu, D. et al. A Novel Low Delay High-Voltage Level Shifter with Transient Performance Insensitive to Parasitic Capacitance and Transfer Voltage Level. Circuits Syst Signal Process 36, 3598–3615 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-016-0488-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-016-0488-z

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