A Current Mirror for Low Voltage, High Performance Analog Circuits

A current mirror for low voltage analog and mixed mode circuits is proposed. The current mirror has high input and output voltage swing capability and can operate at ±1.0 V supply. P-Spice simulations confirm the input current range of 1 A to 500 A with 2.5 GHz bandwidth for the proposed current mirror. Adaptive biasing increases the input voltage swing capability and decreases the undesired offset current. Resistive and capacitive compensation are used to increase its bandwidth.     

Systematic Width-and-Length Dependent CMOS Transistor Mismatch Characterization and Simulation

This paper presents a methodology for characterizing the random component of transistor mismatch in CMOS technologies. The methodology is based on the design of a special purpose chip which allows automatic characterization of arrays of NMOS and PMOS transistors of different sizes. Up to 30 different transistor sizes were implemented in the same chip, with varying transistors width W and length L. A simple strong inversion large signal transistor model is considered, and a new five parameters MOS mismatch model is introduced. The current mismatch between two identical transistors is characterized by the mismatch in their respective current gain factors /, V _TO threshold voltages , bulk threshold parameters , and two components for the mobility degradation parameter mismatch ₀ and _e. These two components modulate the mismatch contribution differently, depending on whether the transistors are biased in ohmic or in saturation region. Using this five parameter mismatch model, an extraordinary fit between experimental and computed mismatch is obtained, including minimum length (1 m) transistors for both ohmic and saturation regions. Standard deviations for these five parameters are obtained as well as their respective correlation coefficients, and are fitted to two dimensional surfaces f(W, L) so that their values can be predicted as a function of transistor sizes. These functions are used in an electrical circuit simulator (Hspice) to predict transistor mismatch. Measured and simulated data are in excellent agreement.     

Multi-Value Voltage-to-Voltage Converter Using a Multi-Stage Symmetrical Charge Pump for On-Chip EEPROM Programming

A fully integrated multi-stage symmetrical structure chargepump and its application to a multi-value voltage-to-voltage converterfor on-chip EEPROM programming are presented. The multi-valuevoltage-to-voltage converter is designed to offer two output voltages,power supply and triple power supply alternatively, which is neededfor a memory array. A dynamic analysis of the multi-stage symmetricalstructure charge pump and an optimization design in terms of circuitarea are also given. The circuit is implemented in a 1.2 CMOSprocess and the measurement results show that a voltage pulse as shortas 5 s with a rise time of 3 s is obtained. For a 5 V powersupply and with a resistive charge of 100 k, the programmingoutput voltage can reach as high as 11 V and output current forprogramming is over 110 A, which are high enough to program thememory cell.     

A 640 by 480 Pixels Readout Circuit for IR Imaging

A readout circuit for a 640 × 480 pixels FPA (focal plane array) has been successfully designed, fabricated and tested. The circuit solution is based on a per pixel source-follower direct injection (SFDI) pre-amplifier. Signal multiplexing is performed in both X and Y direction. The pixel size is 25 m × 25m. The chip is optimized for a QWIP (quantum well infrared photodetector) operating at a temperature of 70 K. The circuit has been realized in a standard 0.8 m CMOS process.     

β-bit serial/parallel multipliers

A generalized -bit least-significant-digit (LSD) first, serial/parallel multiplier architecture is presented with 1n wheren is the operand size. The multiplier processes both the serial input operand and the double precision product -bits per clock cycle in an LSD first, synchronous fashion. The complete two's complement double precision product requires 2n/ clock cycles. This generalized architecture creates a continuum of multipliers between traditional bit-serial/parallel multipliers (=1) and fully-parallel multipliers (=n). -bit serial/parallel multipliers allow anoptimized integrated circuit arithmetic to be designed based on a particular application's area, power, throughput, latency, and numerical precision constraints.This project was pratically funded by the UCSD-NSF I/UCR Center on Ultra-High Speed Intergrated Circuits and Systems.     

Compact High Gain CMOS Op Amp Design using Comparators

This paper discusses the design of high gain, general purpose op amps. The op amp is based on a novel cascaded design using comparators and with structural simplicity approaching that of digital circuits. Ideally, the design tool presented here can be used to optimize gain and CMRR independent of the other op amp performance parameters. The designed op amp has 140 dB open-loop gain and 43 MHz unity gain frequency (GBW) in Berkeley Spice3f Level-2 simulation. The circuit is implemented using a 2.0 m nwell CMOS process through MOSIS. The op amp is self-biased and requires only power supplies of ±2.5 V. It occupies an area of 113 m×474 m.     

1 V All-MOS ΣΔ A/D Converters in the Log-domain

This paper presents novel low-voltage all-MOS analog circuit techniques for the synthesis of oversampling A/D converters. The new approach exploits the possibilities of Log-domain processing by using the MOSFET in subthreshold operation. Based on this strategy, a complete set of very low-voltage (down to 1 V) low-power (below 100 W) all-MOS basic building blocks is proposed. The resulting analog circuit techniques allow the integration of A/D converters for low-frequency (below 100 KHz) applications in digital CMOS technologies. Examples are given for a standard 0.35 m VLSI process.     

1D GaAs Detector Arrays for Digital X-ray Imaging with a 108-μm Spatial Resolution

A 1D x-ray detector array of pitch 108 m is designed, fabricated, and tested. The array is based on the p⁺–n–n–n⁺ structure made in epitaxial GaAs technology. Guard rings are incorporated to reduce detector cross coupling. It is announced that the technology proposed will be used to make arrays with a pitch of 50 m and a spatial resolution of 10 line-pairs/mm, suitable for digital mammography.     

Low-Power Low-Voltage Class-AB Linear OTA for HF Filters with a Large Tuning Range

This letter presents a new low-voltage class-AB differential linear OTA. The proposed transconductor uses a novel scheme based on two cross-coupled class-AB pseudo-differential pairs biased by a Flipped Voltage Follower [1]. The transconductor has been designed using a 0.8 m CMOS technology to operate at 2 V supply voltage with only 260 W of quiescent power consumption. Simulation results show 90 MHz bandwidth with more than two decades of transconductance tuning range.     

A Signal Conditioning Circuit for Piezoresistive Pressure Sensors With Variable Pulse-Rate Output

The equivalent impedance of the conventional ideal inductance implemented from two second-generation current conveyors is firstly calculated taking all the parasitic elements into account. Its equivalent electrical schema, which comprises six components is characterized. It is demonstrated that the most important deviation at high frequencies comes from the phase shifts of the transfers of the conveyors. Compensation of these effects are obtained from the first-order compensation method using a single additive resistor. SPICE simulations using an industrial BiCMOS process are used to demonstrate the validity of this approach. As an example, the current conveyors being DC biased with I₀ = 100 A and supplied under ±2.5 V, an inductance of 0.67 H was found directly usable without compensation up to about 15 MHz. This frequency range is then extended up to about 100 MHz when the circuit has been compensated from a single resistor of 75 .     

Current Testing Procedure for Deep Submicron Devices

This paper presents a test technique that employs two different supply voltages for the same IDDQ pattern. The results of the two measurements are subtracted in order to eliminate the inherent sub-threshold leakage. Summary of the experiment carried out on System on a Chip (SOC) device build in 0.35 technology is also shown. These experiments proved that the method is effective in detecting failures not detectable with the single limit IDDQ.     

An Analog Correlator for a WCDMA Receiver

A prototype analog correlator structure suitable for a WCDMA receiver was implemented. The advantages of this correlator are low power consumption compared to a digital correlator and small chip area. The target is to use such correlator as parallel correlators (fingers) of a RAKE receiver. The analog baseband correlator utilizes passive MOS-multipliers, a first-order low-pass continuous-time oversampling sigma–delta analog-to-digital converter and a second-order sinc type of decimation filter (for both I and Q input paths). The modulator sampling rate is twice the chip rate with oversampling ratios of 8–512 depending of the PN code length. The circuit was implemented in 0.8 m CMOS-technology with a supply voltage of 2.8 V. The layout size is 345 m×686 m and the current drain is approximately 370 A.     

A New Approach to Realize Variable Gain Amplifiers

A new methodology to develop variable gain amplifiers is developed. The methodology is based on a feedback loop to generate the exponential characteristic, which is required for VGA circuits. The proposed idea is very suitable for applications that require very low power consumption, and as an application, a new current mode variable gain amplifier will be shown. The gain is adapted via a current signal ranges from –7.5 A to +6.5 A. Pspice simulations based on Mietec 0.5 m CMOS technology show that the gain can be varied over a range of 29.5 dB, with bandwidth of 3 MHz at maximum gain value. The circuit operates between ±1.5 V and consumes an average amount of power less than 495 W.     

A 70-MHz Continuous-Time CMOS Band-Pass ΣΔ Modulator for GSM Receivers

A 70-MHz continuous-time CMOS band-pass modulator for GSM receivers is presented. Impulse-invariant-transformation is used to transform a discrete-time loop-filter transfer function into continuous-time. The continuous-time loop-filter is implemented using a transconductor-capacitor (G _m -C) filter. A latched-type comparator and a true-single-phase-clock (TSPC) D flip-flop are used as the quantizer of the modulator. Implemented in a MOSIS HP 0.5-m CMOS technology, the chip area is 857 m × 420 m, and the total power consumption is 39 mW. At a supply voltage of 2.5 V, the maximum SNDR is measured to be 42 dB, which corresponds to a resolution of 7 bits.     

A CMOS Offset Phase Locked Loop for a GSM Transmitter

This paper describes a CMOS offset phase locked loop (OPLL) for a global system for mobile communications (GSM) transmitter. The OPLL is a PLL with a down-conversion mixer in the feedback path and is used in the transmit (Tx) path as a frequency converter. It has a tracking bandpass filter characteristic in such a way that the OPLL can suppress the noise in the GSM receiving band (Tx noise) without a duplexer. When the loop bandwidth of the OPLL was 1.0 MHz, the Tx noise level of –163.5 dBc/Hz, the phase error of 0.66° rms, and the settling time of 40 s were achieved. The IC was implemented by using 0.35-m CMOS process. It takes 860 m×620 m of total chip area and consumes 17.6 mA with a 3.0 V power supply.     

A nonvolatile analog neural memory using floating-gate MOS transistors

Simple floating-gate transistors fabricated by a conventional double-polysilicon process show excellent programming and charge-retention characteristics. A five-transistor synapse cell achieves 8-bit resolution and at least 6-bit accuracy for analog neural computation. It occupies 67 m×73 m in a 2-m CMOS process and can retain charge accuracy for over 25 years.This research was partially supported by DARPA under Contracts MDA972-90-C-0037 and MDA972-88-C-0048 and by TRW, Inc.     

Synthesis of Log-Domain Filters from First-Order Building Blocks

Log-domain filters are an important class of current-mode circuits having large-signal linearity and increased tuning range over voltage-mode filter circuits of similar complexity. In this paper we describe synthesis of a single-ended, first-order filter circuit from static and dynamic translinear circuit principles, and show how higher-order filters can be easily constructed from the first-order building block. We address additional issues related to low-frequency (audio-frequency) filter design and present results measured from test circuits and a complete 15-channel filterbank system fabricated in 2 m and 1.2 m BiCMOS processes.     

Low Voltage Rail to Rail CMOS Current Feedback Operational Amplifier and its Applications for Analog VLSI

This paper presents a new CMOS current feedback operational amplifier (CFOA) with rail to rail swing capability at all terminals. The circuit operates as a class AB for lower power consumption. Besides operating at low supply voltages of ±1.5 V, the proposed CFOA has a standby current of 200 A. The proposed CFOA circuit is thus a versatile building block for low voltage low power applications. The applications of the CFOA to realize a transconductor/multiplier cell, MOS-C differential integrator, MOS-C bandpass filter and MOS-C oscillator are given. PSpice simulations based on 1.2 m level three parameters obtained from MOSIS are given.     

IC Voltage to Current Transducers with Very Small Transconductance

This paper deals with the design of very small ac transconductance voltage to current transducers intended for the design of low frequency continuous-time filters, very large resistors and other applications. The first type of Operational Transconductance Amplifiers (OTA) is based on a triode biased transistor and a current division technique. The second one uses partial positive feedback which allows to reduce transistor dimensions but the sensitivity to transistor mismatches increases. The proposed techniques can be used for the design of high-order low frequency IC filters, ladder or based on biquads, with moderated transistor dimensions while the dynamic range-cutoff frequency performance is comparable to previously reported structures. A 10 Hz third order lowpass ladder filter has been designed with these techniques, and it shows a dynamic range of 62 dB. Besides, a novel biasing technique for capacitive sources coupled preamplifiers is proposed. Experimental results for a prototype, fabricated in a 1.2 m 1 level below 15 _RMS and dynamic range of 63 dB. The power consumption is only 10 watts and the supply voltages are ± 1.5 volts.