An Analog Voltage Similarity Circuit with a Bell-Shaped Power Consumption

This paper presents a voltage similarity circuit (bump circuit) based on a novel voltage correlator. The proposed circuit is characterized by a power consumption which depends on the similarity between the two inputs. The sensitivity of the bump circuit and the power consumption are at the highest values when the inputs are equal. As the similarity between the input voltages decreases, the total current consumption decreases with a bell-shaped behavior. The proposed bump circuit is very simple in design, made of a new voltage correlator circuit in combination with a differential pair and mimics the behavior of the classical bump circuit. The voltage correlator was implemented using AMS−350nm CMOS technology. Simulation and measurement results suggests that a low power consumption may be achieved if the circuit is used in applications where the input signals have large dissimilarity for most of the circuit operation.