Quasistatic analysis of a dynamic sense amplifier

Quasistatic analysis of a dynamic sense amplifier has been carried out to analyse the initial conditions. As a result of the analysis we obtain a relationship between the hold time and the storage capacitance and also the minimum storage capacitance required to facilitate proper latching for a fixed threshold voltage difference between the latching transistors.     

1.5 V high speed low power CMOS current sense amplifier

A 1.5 V high speed low power current sense amplifier for CMOS SRAMs is described. The design is based on the current mode approach and it can be fabricated using a standard CMOS process. The sensing speed is independent of the bit and data line capacitances and no equalisation is needed during the read access. HSPICE simulations have shown that the proposed circuit outperforms the recently reported circuits in terms of speed and average power dissipation     

A 5 V-only 64K dynamic RAM based on high S/N design

A 5 V-only 64K dynamic RAM is designed and fabricated using double poly-Si technology based on the 3 /spl mu/m design rule. The design features of this dynamic RAM are described. In particular, memory cell and S/N (signal/noise) designs are focused of a dynamic RAM with an on-chip bias generator. The device fabricated provides a typical access time of 120 ns and a 170 mW operating power, with minimized sense noise of less than 50 mV.     

A high dynamic range current-mode amplifier for computed tomography

In this paper, we show a high dynamic range current-mode detector for computed tomography application. A regulated current mirror structure has been implemented at pixel level that provides with 17 bits dynamic range and a noise floor below 3 pARMS. Nonlinearity is kept below 2% and signal bandwidth is higher than 10 kHz. A test structure with 4/spl times/4 pixel array is presented is this paper. Both photodiode and current mode amplifier have been integrated into the same CMOS standard process.     

A 100 ns 5 V only 64K/spl times/1 MOS dynamic RAM

A new high performance 36500 mil/SUP 2/ 64K dynamic RAM has been designed and incorporates: 1) a twisted-metal bit-line architecture, 2) an ultrasensitive sense amplifier with self-restore to V/SUB DD/, 3) internal constant-voltage supply to memory cell plate, 4) a bit-line equalizer and full-size reference capacitor, 5) high-performance enhancement-depletion mode inverter-buffer circuits, 6) TTL negative undershoot protection on address circuits, and 7) active hold-down transistors for both X and Y drivers. A nominal 100 ns access time and power dissipation of less than 150 mW was observed during active operation with a 20 mW power dissipation in the standby mode.     

High-speed charge transfer sense amplifier for 0.5 V DRAM array applications

A new high-speed charge transfer sense amplifier scheme is proposed for 0.5 V DRAM array applications. The combination of both the cross-coupled structure and the boosting capacitance used in the proposed sense amplifier leads to a maximum voltage difference between sense nodes. Based on post-layout simulations, the charge transfer speed and the voltage difference after charge transfer are improved 40.7% and 59.29%, respectively, over the prior art circuits. The power-delay product is then enhanced 38.26%. Besides, both high voltage pre-charge levels and high voltage control signals are not required in this proposed circuit as compared with prior arts.     

A high-speed sensing scheme for 1T dynamic RAMs utilizing theclamped bit-line sense amplifier

A clamped-bit-line sense amplifier (CBLSA) capable of very high-speed operation in one-transistor (1T) DRAM applications has been developed. Results from an experimental test chip demonstrate that the speed of the new circuit is insensitive to bit-line capacitance. Circuit speed is also found to be insensitive to the initial bit-line difference voltage. The CBLSA maintains a low impedance fixed potential on the bit lines during sensing, virtually eliminating sensitivity to inter-bit-line noise coupling and minimizing power supply bounce during sensing. The new sense amplifier operates at higher speeds than conventional circuits and still dissipates less power     

A 70 ns high density 64K CMOS dynamic RAM

A 64K /spl times/ 1 CMOS dynamic RAM has been developed in a double-poly n-well CMOS technology with device scaling to the HMOS III level. A p-channel memory array with n-well protection reduced the operating soft error rate to less than one FIT. Periphery complexity is simplified due to CMOS circuits resulting in a size of 30,464 mil/SUP 2/ with a redundancy efficiency of 68%. The RAM has a typical access time of 70 ns and a CMOS standby power of 25 /spl mu/W. In addition, a static column design offers 35-ns data cycle time for high-bandwidth application.     

CMOS linear high performance push amplifier for WiMAX power amplifier

In this work a novel and efficient approach is proposed to optimize the linearity and efficiency of power amplifiers used in mobile WiMAX applications. A linear and high performance push amplifier is designed and implemented in 0.18 μm CMOS technology to enhance the linearity of a class-E switched-mode power amplifier. The proposed push amplifier consists of two sections; analog and switching sections. The analog section provides required linearity and the switching section guarantees satisfying total efficiency level. Each block is designed and optimized to meet required specifications. The core power amplifier which is a class-E switched-mode power amplifier is also designed to have maximum possible efficiency. The implemented circuit is simulated using HSPICERF and TSMC models for active and passive elements. The proposed power amplifier provides a maximum output power of 25 dBm and a power added efficiency (PAE) as high as 48% at 2.5 GHz operation frequency and supply voltage of 1.8 V. At 1 dB compression point this PA exhibits 23 dBm of output power with 42% PAE and 4.5% EVM which was appropriate for 64QAM OFDM signals.     

一种光接收机中的高增益宽动态范围跨阻放大器

As the front-end preamplifiers in optical receivers, transimpedance amplifiers （TIAs） are commonly required to have a high gain and low input noise to amplify the weak and susceptible input signal. At the same time, the TIAs should possess a wide dynamic range （DR） to prevent the circuit from becoming saturated by high input currents. Based on the above, this paper presents a CMOS transimpedance amplifier with high gain and a wide DR for 2.5 Gbit/s communications. The TIA proposed consists of a three-stage cascade pull push inverter, an automatic gain control circuit, and a shunt transistor controlled by the resistive divider. The inductive-series peaking technique is used to further extend the bandwidth. The TIA proposed displays a maximum transimpedance gain of 88.3 dBΩ with the -3 dB bandwidth of 1.8 GHz, exhibits an input current dynamic range from 100 nA to 10 mA. The output voltage noise is less than 48.23 nV/√Hz within the -3 dB bandwidth. The circuit is fabricated using an SMIC 0.18 μm 1P6M RFCMOS process and dissipates a dc power of 9.4 mW with 1.8 V supply voltage.     

A match-line dynamic energy reduction technique for high-speed ternary CAM using dual feedback sense amplifier

Ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) has become popular in applications requiring high-speed table lookup. This paper presents a match-line (ML) sensing scheme to reduce dynamic energy consumption in MLs during the table lookup operation. Positive feedback has been used twice in the ML sense amplifier to achieve improved performance over existing schemes employing single feedback. Post-layout simulation of the scheme implemented using 180 nm 1.8 V CMOS logic shows that it can have match detection time as small as 907 ps. The scheme can also provide large voltage margin of 734 mV. Compared to popular current-race sensing scheme, the proposed scheme offers 83.8% energy reduction. It can achieve 64.5%, 74.7% and 77.8% energy savings compared to existing feedback schemes namely mismatch dependent, active feedback and resistive feedback, respectively. The energy saving is even larger for more advanced technology node.     

CMOS高频电流差分缓冲放大器

本文提出了一种利用修改的差分电流传输器(MDCC)与电压跟随器实现的全新高频CMOS差分电流缓冲放大器电路(CDBA).PSPICE仿真结果表明,在0～100MHz的频率范围内,提出的电路能很好地满足CDBA的端口特性.作为应用,实现了二阶电流模式多功能滤波器,并对他们进行了仿真.     

A low-voltage sense amplifier with two-stage operational amplifier clamping for flash memory

A low-voltage sense amplifier with reference current generator utilizing two-stage operational amplifier clamp structure for flash memory is presented in this paper, capable of operating with minimum supply voltage at 1 V. A new reference current generation circuit composed of a reference cell and a two-stage operational amplifier clamping the drain pole of the reference cell is used to generate the reference current, which avoids the threshold limitation caused by current mirror transistor in the traditional sense amplifier. A novel reference voltage generation circuit using dummy bit-line structure without pull-down current is also adopted, which not only improves the sense window enhancing read precision but also saves power consumption. The sense amplifier was implemented in a flash realized in 90 nm flash technology. Experimental results show the access time is 14.7 ns with power supply of 1.2 V and slow corner at 125 ℃.     

A high dynamic range ultralow-current-mode amplifier with pico-ampere sensitivity for biosensor applications

A novel ultralow-current-mode amplifier (ULCA) serving for on-chip biosensor signal pre-amplification in the integrated biosensing system (IBS) has been presented and verified in SMIC 0.18 μm CMOS technology by elaborately considering gain, bandwidth, noise, offset, and mismatch. The proposed ULCA solved the noise, bandwidth, and current headroom dilemma in the reported works, and can completely satisfy the specifications of IBS. It provides a current gain of 20 dB, 3 dB bandwidth of 7.03 kHz and input dynamic range of 20 bit, with only 1 nA of DC quiescent current, while the input offset current and noise current are less than 16.0 pA and 4.67 pArms, respectively.     

A novel high-speed sense amplifier for Bi-NOR flash memories

A novel high-speed current-mode sense amplifier is proposed for Bi-NOR flash memory designs. Program and erasure of the Bi-NOR technologies employ bi-directional channel FN tunneling with localized shallow P-well structures to realize the high-reliability, high-speed, and low-power operation. The proposed sensing circuit with advanced cross-coupled structure by connecting the gates of clamping transistors to the cross-coupled nodes provides excellent immunity against mismatch compared with the other sense amplifiers. Furthermore, the sensing times for various current differences and bitline capacitances and resistances are all superior to the others. The agreement between simulation and measurement indicates the sensing speed reaches 2ns for the threshold voltage difference of lower than 1 V at 1.8-V supply voltage even with the high threshold voltage of the peripheral CMOS transistors up to 0.8 V.     

A low-voltage sense amplifier for high-performance embedded flash memory

This paper presents a sense amplifier scheme for low-voltage embedded flash(eFlash)memory applications.The topology of the sense amplifier is based on current mode comparison.Moreover,an offset-voltage elimination technique is employed to improve the sensing performance under a small memory cell current.The proposed sense amplifier is designed based on a GSMC 130 nm eFlash process,and the sense time is 0.43 ns at 1.5 V,corresponding to a46% improvement over the conventional technologies.     

一种适应于高性能嵌入式闪存的低压灵敏放大器

本文提出了一种适应于高性能嵌入式闪存的低压灵敏放大器,通过采用电流比较技术和自动消失调技术,该灵敏放大器在低电源电压下获得了很好的性能,改善了低电流阈值窗口存储器的读取速度。基于上海宏力半导体制造公司130nm的嵌入式闪存工艺,该灵敏放大器的感应时间在1.5V的电源电压下达到了0.43ns,其感应速度比传统的灵敏放大器提高了46%     

A 64-kbit dynamic MOS RAM

A 64-kbit dynamic MOS RAM is developed by using 2 /spl mu/m rule VLSI fabrication technology and low power circuit technology. The 2 /spl mu/m rule VLSI fabrication technology is achieved by improving various aspects of the ultraviolet photolithographic, thin-gate oxidation, arsenic ion implantation, and multilevel interconnection processes. Microminiaturization of the device structure has made the voltage requirements for its MOST threshold voltage and DC supply voltages low. A highly sensitive and low power dissipating sense circuit has been developed for the VLSI RAM. A new level-detecting circuit with a logic threshold which is independent of MOST threshold voltage is proposed. A dynamic address-buffer circuit is also shown. The fabricated 64K RAM has 200 ns of access time, 370 ns of minimum cycle time, and 150 mW of power dissipation under typical supply voltage conditions of V/SUB DD/=7 V and V/SUB BB/=-2 V.     

Decoded-source sense amplifier for high-density DRAMs

The decoded-source sense amplifier (DSSA) for high-speed, high-density DRAMs is discussed. To prevent clamping of the common-source node of the sense amplifier caused by bit-line discharge current, the DSSA has an additional latching transistor with a gate controlled by a column decoder. The DSSA has been successfully installed in a 4-Mb DRAM and provided a RAS access time of 60 ns under a V_cc of 4 V at 85°C     

A 16 384-bit dynamic RAM

A 16-kbit dynamic RAM is described which is TTL compatible on all pins, and fits a standard 16-pin package. A single-transistor storage cell is used which occupies 455 /spl mu/m/SUP 2/. The device is fabricated in n-channel two-layer polysilicon gate technology using conventional design rules. The chip size is 145 by 234 mils. A low-power sense amplifier is used for each 64 memory cells. A special refresh mode is possible in which all 256 sense amplifiers are active, and the entire memory can be refreshed in 64 address cycles.