An advanced adiabatic logic using Gate Overlap Tunnel FET (GOTFET) devices for ultra-low power VLSI sensor applications

Abstract

Adiabatic circuits are ideally suited for implementing RFID tags and biomedical sensors due to their ultra-low power requirements. This paper presents a novel Gate Overlap Tunnel FET (GOTFET) based Advanced Adiabatic Logic which consumes upto 67% lower power than the equivalent CMOS based Symmetric Pass Gate Adiabatic Logic (SPGAL) which is the most power efficient adiabatic topology reported in recent literature. The basic building blocks of the proposed GOTFET Adiabatic Logic (GOTAL) circuits are the innovative Complementary GOTFETs (CGOT) which have twice the on state currents Ion and one order lower off state currents Ioff than the corresponding MOSFETs having same width at the same technology node. In addition to the novel devices, the novelty in the proposed design is the usage of specially engineered low threshold voltage Vt GOTFETs for minimizing non-adiabatic losses and completely avoiding the unnecessary complexity involving the generation of discharge pulse in the resetting clock circuit. Adiabatic inverter, NAND and NOR gates implemented using the proposed GOTAL circuits consume up to two orders (97%) lower power than the corresponding conventional static CMOS circuits at the same frequencies of operation under the same capacitive loads. Although adiabatic circuits are usually designed for low frequency operation, GOTAL circuits may also be used at higher frequencies owing to the improved frequency response of the CGOT devices.