摘要 |
A temperature monitoring technique that eliminates the need for bipolar devices. In one embodiment of the present invention, a long-channel MOS transistor is configured in a diode connection to sense change in temperature. The diode drives a linear regulator and an oscillator. The oscillator in turn drives a counter, which counts pulses for a fixed period of time. The system clock on the chip is used as a temperature-independent frequency to generate a count. The temperature-dependent frequency is counted for a fixed number of system clock cycles. The present invention eliminates band gap circuitry currently used in most thermal sensing devices to provide a temperature-independent reference.
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