Design of an area-efficient CMOS multiple-valued current comparator circuit

In the present state-of-the-art VLSI technology, the need for developing customised circuits to suit varying operating environments and specifications is escalating. The authors introduce an area-efficient current-mode comparator, which is based on modifications of the conventional CMOS current comparator. It has been verified by circuit simulations using the 0.25 μm, 0.18 μm, and 0.13 μm CMOS technology from Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Pte. Ltd (CHRT ) that the proposed design acts as a perfect complement to the conventional current comparator for low threshold current (I_th) levels. A low I_th is generally more favourable than a higher I_th as it tends to dissipate low static power. A more assuring and promising fact is that the area advantage becomes more significant with reducing feature size/technology. This attribute blends well with the contemporary and ongoing process technology miniaturisation. Together with the conventional and recently reported current comparator designs, the proposed current comparator has been integrated into a positive-digit adder (PDA) using the current-mode multiple-valued logic (CMMVL) approach with 1.8 V/0.18 μm CMOS technology. The PDA utilising the new current comparator occupies a silicon area of only 40.2 μm², which is only 77.2% and 22.6% of those of the conventional and contemporary circuits, with a power-delay product improvement of 7.3% and 70.4%, respectively.