th th

International Conference on Advances in Information Communication Technology and VLSI Design–Aug 6 &7 2010

Low Power Full Adder Using MTCMOS Technique

Uma Nirmal1, Geetanjali Sharma2, Yogesh Mishra3
*
Electonics and Communication
Faculty of Engineering and Technology
MITS (Deemed University), Rajasthan
INDIA
1
nirmaluma1012@gmail.com
2
rhytham.1987@gmail.com

Abstract— Multi-threshold CMOS is popular circuit technique
that enables high performance and low power operation. This
technology features both low threshold voltage and high-
threshold voltage MOSFET in a circuit. While the low-threshold
voltage transistors are used to reduce the propagation delay
time ,the high-threshold voltage transistors are used to reduce
the power consumption . This paper describes a low-power full adder
with MTCMOS technology. Comparing with the conventional CMOS
circuit, the proposed circuit is achieved to reduce the power consumption
by 59%.Simulation has been done on tanner EDA tool at
BSIM3v3 180nm technology.
Keywords— Multithreshold CMOS (MTCMOS), low power
circuit, full adder.
I. INTRODUCTION
and their comparative results. We have compared CMOS and
MTCMOS circuits power dissipation over VDD range using
BSIM3V3 180nm.
II. SOURCES OF POWER DISSIPATION
In digital complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor
(CMOS) circuits there are three sources of power dissipation
namely, the dynamic power dissipation, the short-circuit
power dissipation and the leakage power dissipation [3]. The
average dynamic power dissipation of the CMOS logic gate,
can be calculated from the energy required to charge down the
total output load capacitance to ground level and charge up the
output node to VDD driven by a periodic input voltage
waveform with ideally zero rise- and fall-times.The dynamic
power dissipation can be shown as [5]

With the advent of integrated circuits, greater emphasis was
given on performance and miniaturization. But with the
increasing prominence of portable and battery operated
appliances the key factor that requires attention is power
consumption. The feature size is shrinking due to the
advancement in fabrication technology which causes
integration of more transistors in an integrated circuit. As a
result, the magnitude of power per unit area is growing[1] and
the accompanying problem of heat removal and cooling is
worsening. To maintain the chip temperature at an acceptable
level the dissipated heat must be removed effectively, the cost
of heat removal and cooling becomes a significant factor in
these circuits. The reliability of the chip will be greatly
degraded with high power dissipation due to silicon failure
mechanism such as electro migration. The linear scaling of
supply voltage with the feature size was started from half-
micron technology. But the power supply scaling affects the
speed of the circuit [2]. The need of the time is to put efforts
in designing low-power and high speed circuits.
Multi-threshold CMOS (MTCMOS) technology uses both
low threshold voltage and high-threshold voltage MOSFET in
a single LSI. Multi-threshold CMOS has emerged as an
effective technique for reducing subthreshold currents in
standby mode while maintaining circuit performance.
This paper deals with various CMOS and MTCMOS circuits
Pdynamic = α .Cload .V2DD .fCLK (!)
Where fCLK is the operating frequency, Cload is the equivalent
capacitance of the circuit; VDD is the power-supply voltage
and α is the activity factor that indicates how often the circuit
switches with respect to the operating frequency.
A signal of finite rise and fall time applied to the input of a
CMOS circuit causes the short-circuit power dissipation. Both
the NMOS and the PMOS transistors conduct simultaneously
for a short duration due to the finite rise and fall time of input
signal, forming the direct current path between the power-
supply and ground. For a symmetric CMOS inverter with very
small capacitive load, VTn = VTp = VT and kn = kp = k and
input is driven with a waveform with τrise = τfall = τ, the short-
circuit power dissipation can be shown as [5]
P (short-circuit) =1/12.k.τ. fCLK. (VDD-2VT)3 (2)
The short-circuit power dissipation depends on the rise and
fall time of input signal.The two components of leakage
current in CMOS circuit are reverse leakage current and
subthreshold leakage current are illustrated in fig.1 and fig.2
respectively. When the P-N junction between the drain and the
bulk of the transistor is reversely biased the reverse diode

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International Conference on Advances in Information Communication Technology and VLSI Design–Aug 6 &7 2010

leakage occurs. The reverse leakage current of the P-N ID(subthreshold) ≈ (qDnWxcn0/ LB).(e qФr/kT). (eq/kT. (A.Vgs+B.Vds)) (4)
junction is shown as [5]
xc= Subthreshold channel depth,Dn = Electron
Ireverse = A.Js. (eqVbias/kT - 1) (3) diffusion coefficient,LB =Length of the barrier
A = Junction area, Js =Reverse saturation current density, region in the channel ,Фr= Reference potential.
q=Charge of electron, Vbias= Reverse bias voltage across the
P-N junction, K= Boltzmann constant and T =Temperature of The leakage current flows through the circuit when
the junction. the circuit is not switching. The leakage power
dissipation can be shown as

Pleakage=VDD.Ileakage (5)

Where Ileakage = Ireverse + ID(subthreshold)

A. Low-Power Design Issues

Fig.1 Reverse leakage current path in a CMOS inverter with high input
voltage
Another component of leakage current is subthreshold
leakage current, which occurs due to carrier diffusion
between the drain and source regions of the transistor in weak
inversion.
Equation (1) shows that the average dynamic power
dissipation is proportional to V2DD. The power dissipation can
be reduced by reducing the supply voltage. Also, decreasing
Cload and fCLK dynamic power dissipation can be reduced. But
decreasing of Cload would be difficult without sizing down the
interconnections and device. The throughput will be adversely
affected if we reduce the fCLK. Although, using architecture
level approaches like parallel processing and pipelining the
throughput is maintained while reducing the fCLK. But
hardware overhead increases by using these approaches. The
power-supply reduction is very effective in the reduction of
power dissipation, but it will increase the propagation delay
[4]. If the power-supply is scaled down while keeping all
other parameters constant, the propagation delay would
increase. The expression for propagation delay of a CMOS
inverter can be approximately shown as [5]

τpα(Cload..VDD)/A.(VDD–VT)2 (6)
Cload =load capacitance of the circuit, VDD=Power-supply
voltage, VT =Threshold voltage of MOSFET.
It is evident from the equation (6), as VDD approaches to VT
the τp will increase. Although the dynamic power dissipation
decreases as the power supply voltage reduces,[6] the
unavoidable design trade-off is the increase of delay. The
propagation delay expressions for the CMOS inverter circuit
can be approximately shown as [5]

(7)

Fig.2 Subthreshold leakage current path in a CMOS inverter with high input
voltage
The subthreshold leakage current is shown as
If the power supply voltage is being scaled down while all
other variables are kept constant, can the propagation delay
time will increase.Fig.3 shows the variation of propagation
delay of a CMOS inverter as a function of VDD, where the

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International Conference on Advances in Information Communication Technology and VLSI Design–Aug 6 &7 2010
threshold voltages of the NMOS and the PMOS are 0.8 V and
-0.8 V respectively.
Fig.3 Normalized propagation delay of a CMOS inverter as a function of the
power supply voltage VDD
III. POWER REDUCTION USING MTCMOS TECHNIQUE
In MTCMOS circuit technique for reducing power
dissipation low threshold and high threshold voltage
transistors are used. The schematic of power gating technique
using MTCMOS is shown in fig.4. Low threshold voltage
transistors which are fast and have high subthreshold leakage
current are used to implement the logic. High threshold
voltage transistors are used to isolate the low threshold
voltage transistors from supply and ground during standby
(sleep) mode to prevent leakage dissipation.
Fig.4 Power Gating Technique using MTCMOS
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In the active mode, the high VT transistors are turned on and
the logic consisting of low VT transistors can operate with low
switching power dissipation and small propagation delay.
When the circuit is driven into standby mode on the other
hand the high VT transistors are turned off and the conduction
paths for any sub-threshold leakage current that originate from
the internal low VT circuitry are effectively cut off.
IV. MAIN FEATURES OF MTCMOS
This technology has two main features. One is two
operational modes, “active” and “sleep,” for efficient power
management. The other one is that N channel and P-channel
MOSFET with two different threshold voltages are used in a
single chip.
The propagation delay expression (7) clearly shows that the
negative effect of reducing the power supply voltage upon
delay can be compensated for, if the threshold voltage of the
transistor is scaled down accordingly. However, this approach
is limited due to the fact that the threshold voltage cannot be
scaled to the same extent as the supply voltage. When scaled
linearly, reduced threshold voltages allow the circuit to
produce the same speed-performance at a lower VDD.
It should be noted, however, that the threshold voltage
reduction approach is restricted by the concerns on noise
margins and the subthreshold conduction. Smaller threshold
voltages lead to smaller noise margins for the CMOS logic
gates. [7]The subthreshold conduction current also sets a
severe limitation against reducing the threshold voltage. For
threshold voltages smaller than 0.2 V, leakage power
dissipation due to subthreshold conduction may become a
very significant component of the overall power consumption.
The new MTCMOS circuit technology satisfy both
requirements of lowering the threshold voltage of a MOSFET
and reducing stand-by current, both of which are necessary to
obtain high-speed low-power performance at a lower VDD.
V. DESIGN OF FULL ADDER USING MTCMOS TECHNIQUE AT
180NM TECHNOLOGY
The threshold voltage of MOSFET is usually defined as the
gate voltage where a depletion region forms in the substrate of
the transistor, that is, turn-on voltage. MTCMOS technology
provides a solution to the high performance and low power
design requirements of modern designs. MTCMOS is an
effective circuit-level technique that provides a high
performance and low-power design by utilizing both low- and
high-threshold voltage transistors.Implementation of full
adder using CMOS and MTCMOS technique have been
successfully accomplished .The schematic diagram of full
adder using CMOS and MTCMOS technique is shown in fig
5. These circuits are simulated for power dissipation for
different values of supply voltages and the simulated results
are depicted from fig. 6 to fig.7 respectively. Here it is shown
that power dissipation increases as supply voltage increases.
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International Conference on Advances in Information Communication Technology and VLSI Design–Aug 6 &7 2010

Fig.6 Power dissipation of full adder using CMOS technology for different
values of supply voltage.

Fig..7 Power dissipation of full adder using MTCMOS technology for

different values of supply voltages.
(a)

VI. COMPARISON AND RESULTS

Power comparisons for CMOS and MTCMOS full adder
over VDD range is shown in fig.8. Table 1 show the
comparison table between the conventional CMOS circuit and
proposed circuit. Here in fig.8 MTCMOS full adder shows
59% less power dissipation than CMOS full adder at the
supply voltage of 1.0.

(b)
Fig.5 Schematic of full adder using (a) CMOS (b) MTCMOS technology

Fig..8 Power dissipation comparison of full adder using CMOS and

MTCMOS technology.

VII. CONCLUSION
In this paper low power full adder using MTCMOS was
designed. This technology uses MOSFET with two different
threshold voltages on a single chip and introduces a sleep
control scheme for efficient power management.Low-
threshold voltage MOSFET improving the speed performance
at a low supply voltage, while high-threshold MOSFET
. reduces the standby power dissipation. Comparing with the
conventional CMOS full adder, the proposed full adder circuit

Organized by Department of Electronics &Communication Engg PSG College of Technology Coimbatore - 04

 th th
International Conference on Advances in Information Communication Technology and VLSI Design–Aug 6 &7 2010

is achieved to reduce the power dissipation by 59% at 180nm technology in tanner EDA tool.
1V.Proposed full adder circuits is simulated at BSIM3v3

TABLE I
COMPARISION TABLE
Power Dissipation(µW)
Gate type Vdd=1.2V VDD=1.0V VDD=0.8
CMOS MTCMOS CMOS MTCMOS CMOS MTCMOS
FULLADDER 10.9 8.04 7.34 3.03 4.29 1.78

II. REFERENCES
[1] Carothers, J.D. and Radjassamy, R., “Low-power VLSI
design techniques-Current State”, IOS Press, 1998.
[2] Chang, M.C. et al, “Transistor-and circuit-design
optimization for low-power CMOS” IEEE Transactions
on electronic devices, Vol. 55, pp. 84-95, January 2008.
[3] Chandrakasan, A.P et al, “Low-Power CMOS Digital
Design”, pp. 473-484, April 1992.
[4] Mutoh S et al, “1-V Power Supply High-Speed Digital
Circuit Technology with Multithreshold-Voltage CMOS”,
pp. 847-854, August 1995
[5] Kang, S and Leblebici, Y., “CMOS Digital Integrated
Circuits”, TMGH, 2003.
[6] Neil H. E. Weste and K. Eshraghian, Principle of CMOS
VLSIDesign, 2nd Ed.addison Wesley, 1993.
[7] J. Yuan and C. Svensson, “High-Speed CMOS
CircuitTechnique,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 24,
Feb. 1989.

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