Abstract
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have become the channel for establishing the interaction between environmental parameters and smart electronic control system. The implementation of WSN sensor nodes on a single chip through the most prevailing CMOS logic process can provide low-cost, integrated, small, and lightweight sensor modules. Temperature is one the most common environmental parameters in these smart electronic systems for control or data collection purposes. Low power consumption and small IC area both are key challenges for these sensing modules mostly run on limited energy source. Traditional temperature sensor adopts the detection source with parameters of proportional to the absolute temperature (PTAT). These temperature dependent parameters are the cord in this sensor circuits. In designing a temperature sensor, one needs to consider many sources of errors due to process variations, such as, devices miss-matches and the offset voltage of amplifiers. By establishing the relationship between CRRAM’s random telegraph noise (RTN) signal and temperature, a new temperature sensing scheme is demonstrated for the first time. Comparing to traditional detection source, this new sensing scheme could reduce the circuit area and power consumption. While the variation of the RTN signal could be calibrated by an embedded memory. This new sensing scheme is very suitable to low-power low-speed sensor modules.