A power-efficient wide-range signal level-shifter

In this paper, we propose a level shifter circuit that is able to convert signal levels of subthreshold values to super-threshold signal levels. Such a circuit is using a new voltage level shifter topology employing a level-shifting capacitor. This capacitor is charged only when the logic levels of the input and output signals are not corresponding to a high-to-low transition of the input signal. The proposed circuit has a small silicon area, low-power consumption and short propagation delay. Post-layout Simulation results for the proposed circuit implemented in a 0.18-μm 1P6M CMOS technology confirm that the power consumption of this circuit is extremely low comparing to other topologies, and is able to operate over a wide range of the input voltages from 50 mV to 1.8 V, and a wide range of frequencies from 100 Hz to 100 MHz. For both a 0.4 V and a 1.8V supply voltages, the proposed circuit has a propagation delay of 10.43 ns and a power consumption of 9.89 nW for a 10-kHz input signal.