Low-voltage operational amplifier in 0.12 μm digital CMOS technology

The folded cascode operational amplifier (FCOA) designed in this paper is the single-pole operational amplifier (op amp). In this design, the conventional current mirror is replaced with wide swing current mirror to overcome the essential drawback of cascode configuration. In this paper, negative feedback is used to improve the small-signal gain and to ensure better stability than multistage amplifiers. This paper also aims at improving the output voltage swing, power dissipation and robustness of the op amp. The designed FCOA is proficient in achieving 67.44dB gain and 1.77V output swingat typical voltage for 180nm CMOS technology. The FCOA is highly stable with phase margin of 62.58º while dissipating 0.5mW power. This amplifier is further verified for variability analysis for Process, Voltage and Temperature (PVT) variations to check robustness. All together testing is done at 45 different PVT combinations and results are tabulated accordingly. At each corner temperature and voltage are varied for all together nine combinations to properly address the effect of PVT variations. The results shows that the op amp exhibits desired response at four corners (FF, TT, SS, and FS) of process, over -40º to 125º C temperature range. Also it is capable of operating at very low voltage up to 0.9V adequately showing reduction in power dissipation. Thus the designed op amp is low power, high swing and robust towards process, voltage and temperature variations.

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1.0 V-0.18 µm CMOS Tunable Low Pass Filters with 73 dB DR for On-Chip Sensing Acquisition Systems

Electronics ◽

10.3390/electronics10050563 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (5) ◽

pp. 563

Author(s):

Jorge Pérez-Bailón ◽

Belén Calvo ◽

Nicolás Medrano

Keyword(s):

Power Consumption ◽

Dynamic Range ◽

Low Voltage ◽

Cutoff Frequency ◽

Cmos Technology ◽

Active Area ◽

Current Steering ◽

Low Pass ◽

On Chip ◽

Low Pass Filters

This paper presents a new approach based on the use of a Current Steering (CS) technique for the design of fully integrated Gm–C Low Pass Filters (LPF) with sub-Hz to kHz tunable cut-off frequencies and an enhanced power-area-dynamic range trade-off. The proposed approach has been experimentally validated by two different first-order single-ended LPFs designed in a 0.18 µm CMOS technology powered by a 1.0 V single supply: a folded-OTA based LPF and a mirrored-OTA based LPF. The first one exhibits a constant power consumption of 180 nW at 100 nA bias current with an active area of 0.00135 mm2 and a tunable cutoff frequency that spans over 4 orders of magnitude (~100 mHz–152 Hz @ CL = 50 pF) preserving dynamic figures greater than 78 dB. The second one exhibits a power consumption of 1.75 µW at 500 nA with an active area of 0.0137 mm2 and a tunable cutoff frequency that spans over 5 orders of magnitude (~80 mHz–~1.2 kHz @ CL = 50 pF) preserving a dynamic range greater than 73 dB. Compared with previously reported filters, this proposal is a competitive solution while satisfying the low-voltage low-power on-chip constraints, becoming a preferable choice for general-purpose reconfigurable front-end sensor interfaces.

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