Variation resilient reliable design of trigger pulse generator

This study presents a robust design of a trigger pulse generator that produces trigger pulses of variable widths/durations that are tuned using an external control as per the requirements. The proposed design comprises two elementary modules: a delay element and an XOR circuit. The proposed circuit is implemented using a 16 nm CMOS technology node and simulation results have been verified using the SPICE simulator. Various performance parameters such as power consumption, power delay-product, energy-delay product and impact of key circuit parameters [supply voltage (VDD), channel length (Lg), gate width (Wg), channel doping concentration (NA), oxide thickness (TOX), threshold voltage (VT) and carrier mobility (µo)] on the duration of trigger pulses have been studied in-depth and performance parameters are compared with circuits already available in the literature. The proposed circuit produces trigger pulses of a minimum width of 191.3 ps at a nominal supply of 1.0 V with an average power consumption of 160 nW. The width of the trigger pulses can be varied from 191.3 to 457.2 ps using an external control from 1.0 to 0.7 V, respectively, at 16 nm technology node.