Ultra-Low-Voltage CMOS Analog Circuit Design

Ultra-low-voltage CMOS analog circuits operate from supply rails below 0.5 V to minimise power consumption in portable and energy-harvesting systems. Achieving high open-loop gain, flat frequency response and adequate slew rate at such low headroom demands innovative topologies and biasing schemes. Designers exploit subthreshold conduction, body-driven input stages and forward-body-bias techniques to boost transconductance and extend input common-mode range. Composite transistors and advanced compensation methods, including reversed Miller and multi-path architectures, are adopted to reconcile gain–bandwidth trade-offs. Rail-to-rail operation and temperature stability are ensured through careful biasing and curvature-corrected voltage references. The field spans operational transconductance amplifiers, voltage-to-current converters and compact inverter-based stages, with applications in biomedical sensors, Internet-of-Things nodes and low-power signal-conditioning front-ends.

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Ultra-Low-Voltage CMOS Analog Circuit Design publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in ultra-low-voltage cmos analog circuit design across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS): A technology for constructing integrated circuits using paired p- and n-type transistors.

Operational transconductance amplifier (OTA): An amplifier whose differential input voltage controls output current, fundamental in voltage-to-current conversion and active filtering.

Folded-cascode amplifier: A high-gain topology that “folds” input transistors to boost output swing and maintain high gain at low supply voltages.

Subthreshold operation: Device biasing below the threshold voltage to exploit exponential current–voltage characteristics for ultra-low-power operation.

Body-driven input stage: A configuration in which an MOSFET’s substrate (body) terminal, rather than its gate, senses the input, extending the input range under low supplies.

References

1. A fully-differential improved recycling folded-cascode amplifier for fast-settling switched-capacitor applications. Engineering Science and Technology an International Journal (2024).
2. A Low-Voltage Low-Power Voltage-to-Current Converter with Low Temperature Coefficient Design Awareness. Sensors (2025).
3. A 0.3 V, Rail-to-Rail, Ultralow-Power, Non-Tailed, Body-Driven, Sub-Threshold Amplifier. Applied Sciences (2021).
4. Ultra-Low-Voltage Inverter-Based Operational Transconductance Amplifiers with Voltage Gain Enhancement by Improved Composite Transistors. Electronics (2020).