An ultra-low power output capacitor-less low-dropout regulator with slew-rate-enhanced circuit

An ultra-low power output-capacitorless low-dropout (LDO) regulator with a slew-rate-enhanced (SRE)circuit is introduced.The increased slew rate is achieved by sensing the transient output voltage of the LDO and then charging (or discharging) the gate capacitor quickly.In addition,a buffer with ultra-low output impedance is presented to improve line and load regulations.This design is fabricated by SMIC 0.18 μm CMOS technology.Experimental results show that,the proposed LDO regulator only consumes an ultra-low quiescent current of 1.2 μA.The output current range is from 10 μA to 200 mA and the corresponding variation of output voltage is less than 40 mV.Moreover,the measured line regulation and load regulation are 15.38 mV/V and 0.4 mV/mA respectively.     

一种1.8伏带有foldback过流过热保护的低压线性稳压器设计

This paper introduces the design of a l.8 V low dropout voltage regulator （LDO） and a foldback current limit circuit which limits the output current to 3 mA when load over-current occurs. The LDO was implemented in a 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The measured result reveals that the LDO s power supply rejection （PSR） is about -58dB and -54dB at 20Hz and 1kHz respectively,the response time is 4μs and the quiescent currentis 20μA. The designed LDO regulator can work with a supply voltage down to 2.0 V with a drop-out voltage of 200 mV at a maximum load current of 240 mA.     

应用动态偏置和双环反馈技术的CMOS快速瞬态响应低压差线性稳压器设计

This paper presents a low-dropout regulator （LDO） for portable applications with dual-loop feedback and a dynamic bias circuit. The dual-loop feedback structure is adopted to reduce the output voltage spike and the response time of the LDO. The dynamic bias circuit enhances the slew rate at the gate of the power transistor. In addition, an adaptive miller compensation technique is employed, from which a single pole system is realized and over a 59~ phase margin is achieved under the full range of the load current. The proposed LDO has been implemented in a 0.6μm CMOS process. From the experimental results, the regulator can operate with a minimum dropout voltage of 200 mV at a maximum 300 mA load and IQ of 113μA. The line regulation and load regulation are improved to 0. l mV/V and 3.4 μV/mA due to the sufficient loop gain provided by the dual feedback loops. Under a full range load current step, the voltage spikes and the recovery time of the proposed LDO is reduced to 97 mV and 0.142 μs respectively.     

一种全集成高电源抑制比的低压差线性稳压器

This paper presents a capacitor-free CMOS low dropout voltage regulator which has high PSR perfor- mance and low chip area. Pole splitting and gm boosting techniques are employed to achieve good stability. The capacitor-free chip LDO was fabricated in commercial 0.18μm CMOS technology provided by GSMC （Shanghai, China）. Measured results show that the capacitor-free LDO has a stable output voltage 1.79 V, when supply voltage changes from 2.5 to 5 V, and the LDO is capable of driving maximum 100 mA load current. The LDO has high power supply rejection about -79 dB at low frequency and -40 dB at 1 MHz frequency, while sacrifice of the LDO＇s active chip-area is only smaller than 0.02 mm2.     

A 200 mA CMOS low-dropout regulator with double frequency compensation techniques for SoC applications

This paper presents a 200 mA low-dropout(LDO) linear regulator using two modified techniques for frequency compensation.One technique is that the error amplifier uses a common source stage with variable load, which is controlled by the output current,is served as the second stage for a stable frequency response.The other technique is that the LDO uses a pole-zero tracking compensation technique at the error amplifier to achieve a good frequency response.The proposed circuit was fabricated and tested in HJTC 0.18μm CMOS technology. The designed LDO linear regulator works under the input voltage of 2.8-5 V and provides up to 200 mA load current for an output voltage of 1.8 V.The total error of the output voltage due to line and load variation is less than 0.015%.The LDO die area is 630×550μm~2 and the quiescent current is 130μA.     

A 200 mA CMOS low-dropout regulator with double frequency compensation techniques for SoC applications

This paper presents a 200mA low-dropout (LDO) linear regulator using two modified techniques for frequency compensation. One technique is that the error amplifier using common source stage with variable load, which is controlled by output current, is served as the second stage for stable frequency responses. Another technique is the LDO uses pole-zero tracking compensation technique at error amplifier to achieve good frequency response. The proposed circuit was fabricated and tested in HJTC 0.18μm CMOS technology. The designed LDO linear regulator works under the input voltage of 2.8V-5V and provides up to 200mA load current for an output voltage of 1.8V. The total error of the output voltage due to line and load variation is less than 0.015%. The LDO die area is 630*550μm² and the quiescent current is 130μA.     

A 3 A sink/source current fast transient response low-dropout Gm driven linear regulator

A 3 A sink/source G_m-driven CMOS low-dropout regulator(LDO),specially designed for low input voltage and low cost,is presented by utilizing the structure of a current mirror G_m(transconductance)driving technique,which provides high stability as well as a fast load transient response.The proposed LDO was fabricated by a 0.5μm standard CMOS process,and the die size is as small as 1.0 mm~2.The proposed LDO dissipates 220μA of quiescent current in no-load conditions and is able to deliver up to 3 A of load current.The measured results show that the output voltage can be resumed within 2μs with a less than 1mV overshoot and undershoot in the output current step from-1.8 to 1.8 A with a 0.1μs rising and falling time at three 10μF ceramic capacitors.     

Design of an LDO with capacitor multiplier

This paper presents a low quiescent current,highly stable low-drop out(LDO) regulator.In order to reduce capacitor value and control frequency response peak,capacitor multipliers are adopted in the compensation circuit with mathematic calculations.The phase margin is adequate when the load current is 0.1 or 150 mA.Fabricated in an XFAB 0.6μm CMOS process,the LDO produces 12.2 mV(0.7%) overshoot voltage while the current changes at 770 mA/100μs with a capacitor load of 10μF.     

一种具有快速电压跟随和宽输出电压范围的电压模式DC-DC降压型变换器

A high switching frequency voltage-mode buck converter with fast voltage-tracking speed and wide output voltage range has been proposed. A novel error amplifier （EA） is presented to achieve a high DC gain and get high phase margin, including a resistor and capacitor net, a unit gain block and a high gain block. The investigated converter has been fabricated with GF 0.35 μm CMOS process and can operate at 6 MHz with the output voltage range from 0.6 to 3.4 V. The experimental results show that the voltage-tracking speed can achieve 8.8 μs/V for up-tracking and 6 μs/V for down-tracking. Besides, the recovery time is less than 8 μs while the load current suddenly changes 400 mA.     

Design and implement of LED drive circuit chip with the controllable constant output current

Owing to the fact that the LED drive circuit must have constant output current control, we propose a controlled current driver with a high precision for the white light LED. Three discrete constant current settings are available and may be selected at the supply voltage from 2.9 V to 4.4 V, which is up to 1 A. An autozero transconductance amplifier is proposed, which effectively improves the precision, reduces the offset voltage and the noise. The variation in the ratio of the external resistor current to the LED load current is less than 2.3%, when the LED load current changes from 200 mA to 800 mA.     

A capacitor-free CMOS LDO regulator with AC-boosting and active-feedback frequency compensation

A capacitor-free CMOS low-dropout(LDO)regulator for system-on-chip(SoC)applications is presented.By adopting AC-boosting and active-feedback frequency compensation(ACB-AFFC),the proposed LDO enhancement circuit is adopted to increase the slew rate and decrease the output voltage dips when the load current is suddenly switched from low to high.The LDO regulator is designed and fabricated in a 0.6/am CMOS process.The active silicon area is only 770×472μm2.Experimental results show that the total error of the output voltage due to line variation is less than ±0.1 97%.The load regulation is only 0.35 mV/mA when the load current changes fromoto 100mA.     

An Output-Capacitorless Low-Dropout Regulator With Direct Voltage-Spike Detection

An output-capacitorless low-dropout regulator (LDO) with a direct voltage-spike detection circuit is presented in this paper. The proposed voltage-spike detection is based on capacitive coupling. The detection circuit makes use of the rapid transient voltage at the LDO output to increase the bias current momentarily. Hence, the transient response of the LDO is significantly enhanced due to the improvement of the slew rate at the gate of the power transistor.      

High slew rate current mode transconductance error amplifier for low quiescent current output-capacitorless CMOS LDO regulator

This paper presents a CMOS low quiescent current output-capacitorless low-dropout regulator (LDO) based on a high slew rate current mode transconductance amplifier (CTA) as error amplifier. Using local common-mode feedback (LCMFB) in the proposed CTA, the order of transfer characteristic of the circuit is increased. Therefore, the slew rate at the gate of pass transistor is enhanced. This improves the LDO load transient characteristic even at low quiescent current. The proposed LDO topology has been designed and post simulated in HSPICE in a 0.18 µm CMOS process to supply the load current between 0 and 100 mA. The dropout voltage of the LDO is set to 200 mV for 1.2–2 V input voltage. Post-layout simulation results reveal that the proposed LDO is stable without any internal compensation strategy and with on-chip output capacitor or lumped parasitic capacitances at the output node between 10 and 100 pF. The total quiescent current of the LDO including the current consumed by the reference buffer circuit is only 3.7 µA. A final benchmark comparison considering all relevant performance metrics is presented.     

A CMOS Low-Dropout Regulator With Current-Mode Feedback Buffer Amplifier

Current feedback amplifiers (CFAs) provide fast response and high slew rate with Class-AB operation. Fast response, low-dropout regulators (LDRs) are critical for supply regulation of deep-submicron analog baseband and RF system-on-chip designs. An LDR with an CFA-based second stage driving the regulation field-effect transistor is presented. The low dropout (LDO) achieves an output noise spectral density of 67.7 nV radicHz, and PSR of 38 dB, both at 100 kHz. In comparison to an equivalent power consumption voltage feedback buffer LDO, the proposed CFA-based LDO settles 60% faster, achieving 0.6- settling time for a 25-mA load step. The LDO with CFA buffer is designed and fabricated on a 0.25- CMOS process with five layers of metal, occupying 0.23- silicon area.     

Design of low-power analog drivers based on slew-rate enhancement circuits for CMOS low-dropout regulators

Low-power analog driver based on a single-stage amplifier with an embedded current-detection slew-rate enhancement (SRE) circuit is presented. By developing a systematic way to design both the response time and optimal sizing of driving transistors in the SRE circuit, the SRE circuit can be controlled to turn on or turn off properly. In addition, the analog driver only dissipates low static power and its transient responses are significantly improved without transient overshoot when driving large capacitive loads. Implemented in a 0.6-/spl mu/m CMOS process, a current-mirror amplifier with the current-detection SRE circuit has achieved over 43 times improvement in both slew rate and 1% settling time when driving a 470-pF load capacitor. When the proposed analog driver is employed in a 50-mA CMOS low-dropout regulator (LDO), the resultant load transient response of the LDO has 2-fold improvement for the maximum load-current change, while the total quiescent current is only increased by less than 3%.     

A fully on-chip 1-μW capacitor-free low-dropout regulator with adaptive output stage

A fully on-chip 1-μW fast-transient response capacitor-free low-dropout regulator (LDO) using adaptive output stage (AOS) is presented in this paper in standard 0.13-μm CMOS process. The AOS circuit is proposed to deliver extra four times of output current of the operational amplifier at medium to heavy load to extend the bandwidth of the LDO and enhance the slew rate at the gate of the power transistor. And the AOS circuit is shut off at light load to reduce the quiescent current and maintain the stability without requiring area-consuming on-chip capacitor. Meanwhile, the proposed AOS circuit introduces V_OUT offset at medium to heavy load to counteract the V_OUT drop, which is caused by I_LOAD increase. Hence, transient performances of LDO and V_OUT drop between light load and full load are improved significantly with 1.1-μA quiescent current at light load. From the post simulation results, the LDO regulates the output voltage at 0.7 V from a 0.9-V supply voltage with a 100-mA maximum load current. The undershoot, the overshoot and the recovery time of the proposed LDO with I_LOAD switching from 50 μA to 100 mA in 1 μs are about 130 mV, 130 mV and 1.5 μs, respectively. And the V_OUT drop between light load and full load reduces to 0.16 mV.     

一种带瞬态增强电路的无电容型LDO

设计了一种可用于SOC片内供电的新型瞬态增强无电容型线性压差调整器电路.相对于需要由误差放大器、缓冲器和反馈网络三级结构构成的传统LDO,该设计在简单的一级单管控制结构上增加了摆率增强电路(SRE)来实现瞬态响应增强,可以更容易地进行频率补偿,在简化设计过程的同时,保证了较快的响应速度.     

A High Slew-Rate Push–Pull Output Amplifier for Low-Quiescent Current Low-Dropout Regulators With Transient-Response Improvement

A high slew-rate amplifier with push-pull output driving capability is proposed to enable an ultra-low quiescent current (Iq ~ 1muA) low-dropout (LDO) regulator with improved transient responses. The proposed amplifier eliminates the tradeoff between small Iq and large slew-rate that is imposed by the tail-current in conventional amplifier design. Push-pull output stage is introduced to enhance the output driving ability. Small dropout voltage (Vbo) with large-size pass transistor and ultra-low Iq can thus be used to minimize power loss of LDO regulator without transient-response degradation. The proposed amplifier helps to improve stability of LDO regulators without using any on-chip and off-chip compensation capacitors. This is beneficial to chip-level power management requiring high-area efficiency. An LDO regulator with the proposed amplifier has been implemented in a 0.18- mum standard CMOS process and occupies 0.09 mm². The LDO regulator can deliver 50-mA load current at 1-V input and ~ 100-mV V_DO . It only consumes 1.2 muA Iq and is able to recover within ~ 4 mus even under the worst case scenario.     

An Active-Frequency Compensation Scheme for CMOS Low-Dropout Regulators With Transient-Response Improvement

An active-frequency compensation circuit for low- dropout regulators (LDOs) is presented. Compared with the conventional compensation scheme, the proposed circuit can greatly boost the effective current multiplication factor by at least one order of magnitude without increasing any power consumption. Hence, the proposed circuit can generate an internal lower frequency zero and push parasitic poles toward extremely high frequency such that the loop bandwidth can be extended drastically. The required on-chip capacitance is reduced to 0.4 pF, comparing to 5 pF in the conventional compensation scheme. The slew rate at the gate drive of the LDO is also improved by the proposed error amplifier. Implemented in a 0.35- $mu$m 2P4M CMOS process, the LDO with the proposed active-frequency compensation circuit consumes 27 $mu$ A ground current at 150-mA maximum output current with a dropout voltage of 200 mV. Experimental results show that the proposed LDO structure has achieved only 10% settling time of the conventional compensation scheme.