Neuron-MOS current mirror circuit and its application to multi-valued logic

A neuron-MOS transistor (vMOS) is applied to current-mode multi-valued logic (MVL) circuits. First a novel low-voltage and low-power fMOS current mirror is presented. Then a threshold detector and a quaternary T-gate using the proposed z/MOS current mirrors are proposed. The minimum output voltage of the fMOS current mirror is decreased by V_T (threshold voltage) compared with the conventional double cascode current mirror. The vMOS threshold detector is built on a i/MOS current comparator originally composed of vMOS current mirrors. It has a high output swing and sharp transfer characteristics. The gradient of the proposed comparator output in the transfer region can be increased 6.3-fold compared with that in the conventional comparator. Along with improved operation of the novel current comparator the discriminative ability of the proposed vMOS threshold detector is also increased. The performances of the proposed circuits are validated by HSPICE with Motorola 1.5 μm CMOS device parameters. Furthermore the operation of a vMOS current mirror is also confirmed through experiments on test chips fabricated by VDEC*. The active area of the proposed vMOS current mirror is 63μm × 51 μm.