A feedforward excess-phase cancellation technique for integrators

Integrators are useful analogue function blocks. A representative application of integrators is a continuous-time filter on an integrated circuit. Excess phase shift of integrators is one of the most severe problems, because excess phase shift at the unity gain frequency degrades the frequency characteristics of the filters. This paper describes a feedforward excess-phase cancellation technique. The proposed technique is applied to integrators which have feedback with an amplifier. The proposed idea is verified by experiment. It is shown that the excess-phase shift due to the gain-bandwidth product of operational amplifiers is cancelled. The proposed technique is useful for realization of integrated continuous-time filters using integrators because extra capacitors are unnecessary. An integrator with the excess-phase cancellation and a third-order leapfrog filter using the integrator are designed and demonstrated by HSPICE simulation. The integrator has a parasitic pole whose frequency is proportional to the unity gain frequency. The simulation results show that the phase characteristics are improved by the proposed technique over the wide range of the unity gain frequency.