Why would we need a always-on voltage reference?
With a ultra low-power voltage reference we could narrow the margins on supply rails, and we could further reduce the current used in power-on-reset circuits. If we could reduce the current sufficiently it would make a huge impact on the overall current consumption in sleep mode. For low-power applications the sleep current dominates the power budget, and by decreasing sleep currents we could extend battery life. Also, always-on voltage reference would reduce start-up time of the SoC, as it would not require additional time to start-up, when waking up from sleep.
The project could involve:
-investigate analog circuits based on published works
-analyse and evaluate design trade-offs
-design and simulate the circuit candidate in ADE
-potentialy implement the design
-Process node / technology to be agreed with academic co-supervisor.