Compact Ground Bounce Sensors for SoC Energy Harvesting Applications

In this work, the energy harvesting system on chip ground bounce monitoring is addressed, by designing and comparing three ground bounce sensors. Special focus is given in compact sensors implementations, and in particular in the bulk driven MOSFET sensor, in the source follower – transconductor (SF+Gm) and in the DC coupled one. The sensors gain-bandwidth performance trade-off is addressed and all three are designed in an RFCMOS process. Their performance is demonstrated by advanced simulations results, taking into account temperature and process variations, and providing all related metrics from gain/bandwidth to linearity, power consumption and silicon active area. Selection criteria are extracted since each of these sensors is optimum to be used in different applications versus specific performance metrics.