INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR TRENDS IN ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

VOLUME 4 ISSUE 2 APRIL 2015 - ISSN: 2349 - 9303

Analysis of leakage current calculation for nanoscale

MOSFET and FinFET
Kayalvizhi A1
1

Ramya N2

iTRP Engineering College, ECE

Ramyanatesan2010@gmail.com

TRP Engineering College, ECE,

Kayalkavi1992@gmail.com

AbstractThis paper presents logic level estimators of leakage current for nanoscale digital standard cell circuits. Here
the proposed estimation model is based on the characterization of internal node voltages of cells and the characterization
of leakage current in a single Field-Effect Transistor (FET). Finally the estimation model allowed direct implementation of
supply voltage variation impact on leakage current and output voltage drop (loading effect).The technique is feasible for
implementation in Hardware Description Language (HDL) and HDL cell models supporting leakage estimation at
simulation time.
Index Terms FET, HDL, Leakage current, Standard cell

1 INTRODUCTION

HE leakage current especially important in burst mode, type

integrated circuits where most of the time the system is in idle
or sleep mode.
No computation takes place during sleep mode. For example,
a cell phone will be in the standby mode for most of the time
where the processor is idle. With the leakage current during the
idle mode, power will be continuously drained with no useful
work being done. There are different mechanisms that contribute
to leakage power. These include sub-threshold leakage, the gate
leakage, and BTBT leakage [2]. Hence leakage current has
become a dominant factor in the design of VLSI circuits. The
Leakage current appeared recently as a main factor of power
dissipation. This is because, the move from micro-technology to
nanotechnology, which has as significant changes and scales in
SPICE parameters such as threshold voltage, length of the gate,
the gate dioxide thickness and supply voltage, all of these results
in a dramatic decrease of the leakage current value .

The goal of low power design for battery powered devices is

for extend the battery service life while meeting performance
requirements. Reducing power dissipation is a design goal, even
for non portable device since excessive power dissipation results
in increased packaging and cooling costs as well as potential
reliability problems. This approach powerful for the logic level
HDL modeling of leakage circuits, capable of obtaining good
accuracy of leakage estimation.

2 BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORKS

In nanoscale digital circuits, several leakage phenomena of FET
devices can contribute to total static power dissipation, depending on
the specific technological, such as a MOSFET, FinFET. In digital
CMOS below 65-NM node, the gate leakage, the sub threshold
leakage, and body leakage have been recognized as the dominant
types [2] and are the focus of estimation/ reduction techniques. The
various leakage types of FET devices behave differently from each
other with temperature and circuit level countermeasures, so that it is
of interest to individually estimate the impact of each type of a given
circuit design.
A very accurate characterization of leakage current of a single
FET is straightforward; this is not the case for connecting transistors
of generic digital cells, due to two effects affecting node voltages and
therefore the actual current flowing in the devices: the stacking effect
and the loading effect. The former occurs whenever transistors are
stacked in a drainsource series connection, and strongly affects all
leakage components due to the substantial change in the node
voltages [1].
In FinFET designs, physical device-level models of leakage are
available [4], showing that the sub threshold current is dominant
over the gate and body current. In [6], a thermal model for FinFETbased NAND, NOR, and inverter has been presented, for predicting
thermal runaway, considering dynamic and static power, the latter
based on a previous model of the sub threshold leakage in doublegate FETs.

Kayalvizhi A is currently pursuing masters degree program in VLSI Design

in TRP Engg College,Tamilnadu, E-mail: kayalkavi1992@gmail.com
Ramya N is assitant professor in Electronics and Communication
Engineering in TRP Engg College, Tamilnadu, E-mail:
ramyanatesan2010@gmail.com

3 METHODOLOGY
This approach presents Logic-level estimators of the leakage current,
in nanoscale standard cell based designs.
Very accurate
characterization of the leakage current in a single FET is
straightforward.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR TRENDS IN ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

VOLUME 4 ISSUE 2 APRIL 2015 - ISSN: 2349 - 9303
This is not the case for connecting transistors of generic digital
cells, due to two effects affecting node voltages and therefore the
actual current flowing in the devices: the stacking effect and the
loading effect. The sub threshold leakage current flowing through a
stack of series-connecting transistors reduces when more than one
transistor in the stack is turned off. This effect is known as the
stacking effect. Loading effect as the change in the leakage of a logic
gate due to its input and output loading.

3.1 Procedures for leakage calculation

The single device static current characterization, the node
voltages line characterization of the circuit structures composing the
cells, and the voltage drop loading effect characterization, the
procedure for obtain the leakage current drawn by any cell in a
design is as follows.
1) From the input pattern, in the characterization database of the
cell, we recover the voltage line associated the internal nodes
of the pull-up and pull-down circuit structures.
2) From the input pattern, the resize factor of the cell, the total
equivalent width of the load, and the VDD value, we find the
output voltage drop V due to loading effect.
3) Apply the actual voltage value VDD V to the voltage line of
the internal nodes of the OFF pull-up/pull-down network, and
find the actual internal node voltages.
4) We apply the actual voltage value +V to the voltage line of
the internal nodes of the pull-down/pull-up network, and find
the actual internal node voltages.
Leakage estimation techniques
Tested the accuracy of the method against SPICE simulations
of single cells, for each basic cell type and resize factor, and for each
possible input pattern. The different accuracy among input patterns
can be described to internal voltage values. The average leakage
current estimated with respect to all input patterns.
In complex circuits, the loading effect often exhibits
compensation between positive and negative leakage modification in
different cells. It is essential that an estimation technique be capable
of accurately capturing those design cases where such compensation
does not occur. Thus, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the
approach in modeling the loading effect, we focused in a set of
critical net lists, specifically designed to show a considerable loading
effect due to the disproportion of the fan out with respect to the
driver size.
In a circuit composed of multiple cells, the estimation algorithm
sums up the leakage contributions of all cells considering the loading
effects, whereas in SPICE simulations and measure the total static
current flowing through the supply voltage generator connecting to
the circuit under test.
Generate a vector of pseudorandom values of the technological
parameters affected by variations. For intra cell transistor mismatch
analysis, variations in node voltages should be characterized with
respect to the joint pseudo random variations of single transistors,
which results in a more complex implementation of the procedure
but it does not imply any modification to the leakage calculation
scheme. The technique is feasible for implementation in a Hardware
Description Language (HDL) environment.

The loading effect on a digital cell driving a high logic value on

its output node OUT connecting to the input nodes of other digital
cells. Given a cell driving a set of other cells, it is possible to
estimate the voltage drop V caused by the loading effect, for both
high and low logic output voltage. Fig.1 shows the corresponding
equivalent circuit. Qp models the pull-up network in the driving cell,
while Q1QN are the transistors in the driven cells directly
connecting to node OUT. For simplicity, assume, Q1QN being all
n-type devices; the same analysis can be carried on distinguishing a
set of n-type and a set of p-type driven devices and leading to the
same conclusion. The voltage drop V generally behaves nonlinearly
with VDD. To accurately calculate the voltage drop, we chose to
characterize it at different supply voltages.
Vdd

QP

QN

Q1

3.2

3.3 Calculation output voltage drop

OUT

GND
Fig. 1. Equivalent circuit for voltage drop calculation

5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The characterization of internal node voltages in all the pull-up/pulldown circuit structures that compose a cell library can be easily done
as a function of the actual voltage swing.
Vdd
A

B
C
GND
Fig. 2. Stacks of three N-type transistors

The internal node voltage characterization is needed for circuit

structures, including stacked transistors, which occur in generic cells.
The characterization can be easily extending to series-connecting
transmission-gate structures.

Each circuit structure was simulated using a DC sweep, in 30 C and

100 C, for VDD = 0.11.0 V with 0.1 V steps, for all input patterns.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR TRENDS IN ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

VOLUME 4 ISSUE 2 APRIL 2015 - ISSN: 2349 - 9303
Trans.Electron Device, vol. 54, no. 12, pp. 31863194.
[9] Rahman H. and Chakrabarti C. (2004), A leakage estimation and
reduction technique for scaled CMOS logic circuits considering
gate leakage, in Proc. ISCAS, vol. 2, pp. 297300.
[10] Rao R, Burns J, Devgan . and Brown R. (2003), Efficient
techniques for gate leakage estimation, in Proc. ISLPED, pp. 100
103.

Fig. 3. FinFET characteristics

CONCLUSION

This logic-level model allows the accurate estimation of leakage

current in nanoscale digital standard cell circuits. The analysis of
voltages in the internal nodes of standard cells shows a practically
linear depending in the output voltage swing and Several tests have
been carried out in a full cell library in dedicated circuit cases for
loading effect analysis and in Multicell circuit cases at different
supply voltages. To test the accuracy of the method against SPICE
simulations of single cells, for each basic cell type and resize factor
and for each possible input patterns. FinFET circuits used in low
power design in digital circuit.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author wish to thank N. Ramya and Dr.P. Thiruvalarselvan for
fruitful discussions.

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