A High-Speed and Power-Efficient Voltage Level Shifter for Dual-Supply Applications

This brief presents a fast and power-efficient voltage levelshifting circuit capable of converting extremely low levels of input voltages into high output voltage levels. The efficiency of the proposed circuit is due to the fact that not only the strength of the pull-up device is significantly reduced when the pull-down device is pulling down the output node, but the strength of the pull-down device is also increased using a low-power auxiliary circuit. Postlayout simulation results of the proposed circuit in a 0.18-μm technology demonstrate a total energy per transition of 157 fJ, a static power dissipation of 0.3 nW, and a propagation delay of 30 ns for input frequency of 1 MHz, low supply voltage level of V
_DDL
= 0.4 V, and high supply voltage level of V
_DDH
= 1.8 V.