Design of fast low-power floating high-voltage level-shifters

What limits performance in some recently published digital floating level-shifters are identified and a new level-shifter is proposed to address these limitations. An order-of-magnitude reduction in power dissipation compared with the recently published fast high-voltage level-shifters is obtained; simulations in a high-voltage 0.35 μm process show the proposed design is capable of shifting a 2.5 V logic signal up by 17.5 V with a propagation delay of 3 ns and a transition energy of 6 pJ.