A novel voltage-type sense amplifier for low-power nonvolatile memories
Based on the requirements of the nonvolatile memories embedded in ultra low-power RFID transponders, a novel voltage-type sense amplifier is designed to achieve both the reduced reading power and the improved reliability. Compared to the conventional voltage-type sense amplifier, the additional capacitor and current limiter are introduced in the novel voltage-type sense amplifier to reduce the reading power and to improve the reading reliability. The simulations show that the reading power and reliability of our voltage-type sense amplifier are superior to the previously reported voltage-type sense amplifier without speed loss but with only a little increased area. A testing chip has been fabricated based on 0.18 mu m EEPROM technology to verify the design. The novel voltage-type sense amplifier can be implemented to the low-power nonvolatile memory embedded in RFID transponder.
sense amplifier low-power nonvolatile memory transponder