CMOS compatible temperature sensor using lateral bipolar transistor for very wide temperature range applications

A CMOS process compatible wide range temperature sensor that takes advantage of the lateral bipolar transistor is described. Concerning accuracy, a temperature error of 0.34°C rms in current mode and of 1.86°C rms in voltage mode (without post-fabrication trimming) are the measured performance of this integrated sensor, over the -50°C to 150°C temperature range. Other important characteristics are the small surface (290x396µm2), low cost, the less than 1 mW power consumption, the higher than 40 dB PSRR, and the output signal swing which is intrinsically referenced to the temperature range and has been specially conditioned for analog to digital conversion in both, current and voltage modes. The characteristics of this sensor make it specially suitable for low-cost high-volume integrated microsystems over a wide range of fields, such as automative, space, oil prospect, biomedical, domotics, etc.