Design of an Efficient and Low-Power Voltage Level Shifter for Enhanced Performance in Dual-Supply Applications

Abstract

The present work presents an efficient and low-power voltage level shifter for enhanced performance in dual-supply applications. The proposed circuit’s efficiency is based on the fact that the strength of the pull-up device is lowered while the pull-down device pulls the output down. At the same time, the pulldown device’s strength is increased by an auxiliary circuit that consumes low power. The proposed circuit is simulated in 0.18 µm technology Cadence Virtuoso software. The simulation results show that the proposed circuit can convert extremely low level of input voltage into high output voltage level. That is, it can convert low input voltage VDDL = 0.8 V to high output voltage VDDH = 3 V with power dissipation of 8.7 µW.