Low Voltage High Gain Linear Class AB CMOS OTA with DC Level Input Stage
This paper presents a low-voltage low-power differential linear transconductor with near rail-to-rail input swing. Based on the current-mirror OTA topology, the proposed transconductor combines the Flipped Voltage Follower (FVF) technique to linearize the transconductor behavior that leads to class- AB linear operation and the virtual transistor technique to lower the effective threshold voltages of the transistors which offers an advantage in terms of low supply requirement. Design of the OTA has been discussed. It operates at supply voltages of about ±0.8V. Simulation results for 0.18μm TSMC CMOS technology show a good input range of 1Vpp with a high DC gain of 81.53dB and a total harmonic distortion of -40dB at 1MHz for an input of 1Vpp. The main aim of this paper is to present and compare new OTA design with high transconductance, which has a potential to be used in low voltage applications.
[1] Tien-Yu Lo and Chung-Chih Hung, "A wide tuning range Gm-C
continuous- time analog filter," IEEE Trans.Circuits Syst. I, vol. 54, no.
4, pp.713-722, 2007.
[2] J. Ramirez-Angulo, R.G. Carvajal, A. Torralba, J. Galan, A.P. Vega-
Leal and J. Tombs, "The Flipped Voltage Follower: A useful cell for low
voltage low power circuit design," IEEE Int, Symp. on Circuits and
Systems, vol.3, pp. 615-618, 2002.
[3] Markus Helfenstein, Qiuting Huang and Geoge S. Moschytz, "90 dB, 90
MHz, 30 mW CMOS OTA for a high capacitive load," International
Journal of Circuit Theory and Application, Int. J. Circ. Theor. Appl. ,
vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 473-483, 1999.
[4] Stanislaw Szczepanski, Bogdan Pankiewicz and Slawomir Koziel
"Programmable feedforward linearized CMOS OTA for fully differential
continuous-time filter design," International Journal of Circuit Theory
and Design, Int. J. Circ. Theor. Appl. 2009.
[5] Antonio J. Lopez-Martin, Sushmita Baswa, Jaime Ramirez -Angulo and
Ramon Gonzalez Carvajal, "Low voltage super class AB CMOS OTA
cells with very high slew rate and power efficiency," IEEE Journal of
Solid-State Circuits; vol. 40, no. 5, pp.1068-1077, 2005.
[6] Antonio J. Lopez-Martin, Jaime Ramirez -Angulo, Chandrika Durbha
and Ramon Gonzalez Carvajal, "A CMOS Transconductor with
multidecade tuning using balanced current scaling in moderate
inversion," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 40, no. 5,
pp.1078-1083, 2005.
[7] Renato Rimolo-Donadio, Alexander Mora-Sanchez and Dietmar
Schroeder, "High slew rate configurable class AB fully differential
operational transconductance amplifier for switched capacitor circuit
applications," Workshop on Circuits, Systems and Signal Processing
PRORISC 2006 Veldhoven (The Netherlands).
[8] Juan A. Galan, Antonio J. Lopez-Martin, Ramon Gonzalez Carvajal,
Jaime Ramirez-Angulo and Carlos Rubia-Marcos, "Super class AB
OTAs with adaptive biasing and dynamic output current scaling," IEEE
Transactions on Circuits and Systems-I: regular papers, vol. 54, no.
3pp.449-457, 2007,.
[9] S. Baswa, Antonio J. Lopez-Martin, Jaime Ramirez-Angulo and Ramon
Gonzalez Carvajal, "Low voltage micro-power super class AB CMOS
OTA," Electronics letters, vol. 40, no. 4, pp.216-217, 2004.
[10] F. Palma and S. Durante, "Gm-Extraction for rail-to-rail input stage
linearization," International Journal of Circuit Theory and Design, Int.
J. Circ. Theor. Appl., vol. 33, no. 6, pp.541-552, 2005.
[11] Carrillo JM, Duque-Carrillo JF, Torelli G, Ausin JL, "Constant-gm
constant-slew-rate high-bandwidth low-voltage rail-to-rail CMOS input
stage for VLSI cell libraries," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol.
38, no. 8, pp.1364-1372, 2003.
[12] Monsuro P, Pennisi S, Scotti G, Trifeletti A, "Linearization technique
for source-degenerated CMOS differential transconductors," IEEE
Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, vol. 54, no. 10, pp.848-852,
2007.
[13] Ergun B. S. and Kuntman H, "On the design of new CMOS DO-OTA
topologies providing high output impedance and extended linearized
range," Istanbul University, Journal of Electrical and Electronics
Engineering, vol. 5, no. 2, pp.1449-1461, 2005.
[14] Chen J., Sanchez-Sinencio E., Fellow IEEE, and Silva-Martinez J.,
"Frequency-Dependent Harmonic-Distortion Analysis of a Linearized
Cross-Coupled CMOS OTA and its Application to OTA-C Filters,"
IEEE Transaction on Circuit and Systems, vol. 53, no. 3, pp.499-510,
2006.
[15] Manuel Carrasco-Robles and Luis Serrano, "Obtaining maximally flat
transconductances with any number of multiple coupled differential
pairs," International Journal of Circuit Theory and Application, Int. J.
Circ. Theor. Appl. 2009.
[16] M. Laguna, C. De la Cruz-Blas, A. Torralba, R.G. Carvajal, A. Lopez-
Martin and A. Carlosena , " A novel low voltage low power class AB
linear transconductor," IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and
Systems ISCAS, vol.1, pp. 725-728, 2004.
[17] J.A. Galan, R. G. Carvajal, F. Munog, A. Torralba and J. Ramirez-
Angulo, "Low power low voltage class AB linear OTA for HF filters
with a large tuning range," IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems,
vol. 2, pp. 9-12, 2002.
[18] M. G. Degrauwe, J.Rijmenants and E. A. Vittoz, "Adaptive biasing
CMOS amplifiers," IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits, vol. 17, no. 3,
pp. 522-528, 1982.
[19] S. Sengupta, "Adaptively biased linear transconductor," IEEE
Transactions on Circuits and Systems, vol. 52, no. 11, pp. 2369-2375,
2005.
[20] Ayman A. Fayed and Mohammed Ismail , "A Low-Voltage, Highly
Linear Voltage-Controlled Transconductor," IEEE Transactions on
Circuits and Systems-II: Express briefs, vol. 52, no. 12, pp. 831-835,
2005.
[21] Ko-Chi Kuo and Hsing-Hui Wu "A Low-Voltage, Highly Linear, and
Tunable Triode Transconductor," Electron Devices and Solid-State
Circuits EDSSC, pp. 365-368; 2007.
[22] A. Gharbiya and M. Syrzycki, "Highly linear, tunable, pseudo
differential transconductor circuit for the design of Gm-C filters," IEEE
Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering
CCECE; vol.1, pp. 521-526, 2002.
[23] B. Calvo, S. Celma, J. Ramirez-Angulo and M.T. Sanz, "Low-voltage
pseudo-differential transconductor with improved tunability-linearity
trade-off," Electronics Letters, vol.42, no. 5, pp.862-863, 2006.
[24] SzczepanskiS. and Koziel S., "Phase compensation scheme for
feedforward linearized CMOS operational transconductance amplifier,"
Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 141-148,
2004.
[25] Giuseppe Ferri, Vincenzo Stornelli, and Angelo Celeste, "Integrated
Rail-to-Rail Low-Voltage Low-Power Enhanced DC-Gain Fully
Differential Operational Transconductance Amplifier," ETRI Journal,
vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 785- 793, December 2007.
[26] R. G. Carvajal, J. Ramirez Angulo, A. J. López-Martín, A. Torralba, J
Galán, A. Carlosena, F. Muñoz, "The Flipped Voltage Follower: A
useful cell for low-voltage low-power circuit design," IEEE Trans.
Circuits Syst. I, vol. 52, no. 7, pp.1276-1291, 2005.
[27] Pietro Monsurr`o, Salvatore Pennisi, Giuseppe Scotti and Alessandro
Trifiletti, "0.9-V CMOS cascade amplifier with body-driven gain
boosting," International Journal of Circuit Theory and Design, Int. J.
Circ. Theor. Appl. 2009.
[28] Xuguang Zhang and Ezz. I. El-Masry "A low voltage body driven
CMOS transconductor," Midwest Symposium Circuits and Systems
MWSCAS; vol.1, pp.328-331, 2002.
[29] J. Ramirez-Angulo; S.C. Choi; G. Gonzalez-Altamirano "Low-voltage
circuits building blocks using multiple-input floating-gate transistors,"
IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Fundamental Theory and
Applications; vol. 42, no. 11, pp. 971 -974, 1995.
[30] Chong-Gun Yu; R. L. Geiger, "Very low voltage operational amplifiers
using floating gate MOS Transistor," IEEE International Symposium on
Circuits and Systems, pp. 1152 -1155, 1993.
[31] G. Giustolisi; G. Palmisano; T. Segreto. "1.2-V CMOS op-amp with a
dynamically biased output stage," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits,
vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 632 -636, 2000.
[32] A.Torralba, R.G. Carvajal, J. Ramirez-Angulo and F. Munoz "Output
stage for low supply voltage, high performance CMOS current mirrors,"
Electronics letters, vol. 38, no. 24, pp.1528-1529, 2002.
[33] Néjib Hassen, Houda Bdiri Gabbouj and Kamel Besbes, "Low voltage
high performance current mirros: application to linear voltage to current
converter," International Journal of Circuit Theory and Design, Int. J.
Circ. Theor. Appl. 2009.
[34] The MOSIS service, "Wafer electrical test dada and spice model
parameters," http://www.mosis.org/test/
[35] Juan Antonio Gómez Galán, Manuel Pedro Carrasco, Melita Pennisi,
Antonio Lopez Martin, Ramon González Carvajal, and Jaime Ramírez-
Angulo, "Low-Voltage Tunable Pseudo-Differential Transconductor
with High Linearity," ETRI Journal, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 576- 584,
October 2009.
[1] Tien-Yu Lo and Chung-Chih Hung, "A wide tuning range Gm-C
continuous- time analog filter," IEEE Trans.Circuits Syst. I, vol. 54, no.
4, pp.713-722, 2007.
[2] J. Ramirez-Angulo, R.G. Carvajal, A. Torralba, J. Galan, A.P. Vega-
Leal and J. Tombs, "The Flipped Voltage Follower: A useful cell for low
voltage low power circuit design," IEEE Int, Symp. on Circuits and
Systems, vol.3, pp. 615-618, 2002.
[3] Markus Helfenstein, Qiuting Huang and Geoge S. Moschytz, "90 dB, 90
MHz, 30 mW CMOS OTA for a high capacitive load," International
Journal of Circuit Theory and Application, Int. J. Circ. Theor. Appl. ,
vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 473-483, 1999.
[4] Stanislaw Szczepanski, Bogdan Pankiewicz and Slawomir Koziel
"Programmable feedforward linearized CMOS OTA for fully differential
continuous-time filter design," International Journal of Circuit Theory
and Design, Int. J. Circ. Theor. Appl. 2009.
[5] Antonio J. Lopez-Martin, Sushmita Baswa, Jaime Ramirez -Angulo and
Ramon Gonzalez Carvajal, "Low voltage super class AB CMOS OTA
cells with very high slew rate and power efficiency," IEEE Journal of
Solid-State Circuits; vol. 40, no. 5, pp.1068-1077, 2005.
[6] Antonio J. Lopez-Martin, Jaime Ramirez -Angulo, Chandrika Durbha
and Ramon Gonzalez Carvajal, "A CMOS Transconductor with
multidecade tuning using balanced current scaling in moderate
inversion," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 40, no. 5,
pp.1078-1083, 2005.
[7] Renato Rimolo-Donadio, Alexander Mora-Sanchez and Dietmar
Schroeder, "High slew rate configurable class AB fully differential
operational transconductance amplifier for switched capacitor circuit
applications," Workshop on Circuits, Systems and Signal Processing
PRORISC 2006 Veldhoven (The Netherlands).
[8] Juan A. Galan, Antonio J. Lopez-Martin, Ramon Gonzalez Carvajal,
Jaime Ramirez-Angulo and Carlos Rubia-Marcos, "Super class AB
OTAs with adaptive biasing and dynamic output current scaling," IEEE
Transactions on Circuits and Systems-I: regular papers, vol. 54, no.
3pp.449-457, 2007,.
[9] S. Baswa, Antonio J. Lopez-Martin, Jaime Ramirez-Angulo and Ramon
Gonzalez Carvajal, "Low voltage micro-power super class AB CMOS
OTA," Electronics letters, vol. 40, no. 4, pp.216-217, 2004.
[10] F. Palma and S. Durante, "Gm-Extraction for rail-to-rail input stage
linearization," International Journal of Circuit Theory and Design, Int.
J. Circ. Theor. Appl., vol. 33, no. 6, pp.541-552, 2005.
[11] Carrillo JM, Duque-Carrillo JF, Torelli G, Ausin JL, "Constant-gm
constant-slew-rate high-bandwidth low-voltage rail-to-rail CMOS input
stage for VLSI cell libraries," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol.
38, no. 8, pp.1364-1372, 2003.
[12] Monsuro P, Pennisi S, Scotti G, Trifeletti A, "Linearization technique
for source-degenerated CMOS differential transconductors," IEEE
Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, vol. 54, no. 10, pp.848-852,
2007.
[13] Ergun B. S. and Kuntman H, "On the design of new CMOS DO-OTA
topologies providing high output impedance and extended linearized
range," Istanbul University, Journal of Electrical and Electronics
Engineering, vol. 5, no. 2, pp.1449-1461, 2005.
[14] Chen J., Sanchez-Sinencio E., Fellow IEEE, and Silva-Martinez J.,
"Frequency-Dependent Harmonic-Distortion Analysis of a Linearized
Cross-Coupled CMOS OTA and its Application to OTA-C Filters,"
IEEE Transaction on Circuit and Systems, vol. 53, no. 3, pp.499-510,
2006.
[15] Manuel Carrasco-Robles and Luis Serrano, "Obtaining maximally flat
transconductances with any number of multiple coupled differential
pairs," International Journal of Circuit Theory and Application, Int. J.
Circ. Theor. Appl. 2009.
[16] M. Laguna, C. De la Cruz-Blas, A. Torralba, R.G. Carvajal, A. Lopez-
Martin and A. Carlosena , " A novel low voltage low power class AB
linear transconductor," IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and
Systems ISCAS, vol.1, pp. 725-728, 2004.
[17] J.A. Galan, R. G. Carvajal, F. Munog, A. Torralba and J. Ramirez-
Angulo, "Low power low voltage class AB linear OTA for HF filters
with a large tuning range," IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems,
vol. 2, pp. 9-12, 2002.
[18] M. G. Degrauwe, J.Rijmenants and E. A. Vittoz, "Adaptive biasing
CMOS amplifiers," IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits, vol. 17, no. 3,
pp. 522-528, 1982.
[19] S. Sengupta, "Adaptively biased linear transconductor," IEEE
Transactions on Circuits and Systems, vol. 52, no. 11, pp. 2369-2375,
2005.
[20] Ayman A. Fayed and Mohammed Ismail , "A Low-Voltage, Highly
Linear Voltage-Controlled Transconductor," IEEE Transactions on
Circuits and Systems-II: Express briefs, vol. 52, no. 12, pp. 831-835,
2005.
[21] Ko-Chi Kuo and Hsing-Hui Wu "A Low-Voltage, Highly Linear, and
Tunable Triode Transconductor," Electron Devices and Solid-State
Circuits EDSSC, pp. 365-368; 2007.
[22] A. Gharbiya and M. Syrzycki, "Highly linear, tunable, pseudo
differential transconductor circuit for the design of Gm-C filters," IEEE
Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering
CCECE; vol.1, pp. 521-526, 2002.
[23] B. Calvo, S. Celma, J. Ramirez-Angulo and M.T. Sanz, "Low-voltage
pseudo-differential transconductor with improved tunability-linearity
trade-off," Electronics Letters, vol.42, no. 5, pp.862-863, 2006.
[24] SzczepanskiS. and Koziel S., "Phase compensation scheme for
feedforward linearized CMOS operational transconductance amplifier,"
Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 141-148,
2004.
[25] Giuseppe Ferri, Vincenzo Stornelli, and Angelo Celeste, "Integrated
Rail-to-Rail Low-Voltage Low-Power Enhanced DC-Gain Fully
Differential Operational Transconductance Amplifier," ETRI Journal,
vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 785- 793, December 2007.
[26] R. G. Carvajal, J. Ramirez Angulo, A. J. López-Martín, A. Torralba, J
Galán, A. Carlosena, F. Muñoz, "The Flipped Voltage Follower: A
useful cell for low-voltage low-power circuit design," IEEE Trans.
Circuits Syst. I, vol. 52, no. 7, pp.1276-1291, 2005.
[27] Pietro Monsurr`o, Salvatore Pennisi, Giuseppe Scotti and Alessandro
Trifiletti, "0.9-V CMOS cascade amplifier with body-driven gain
boosting," International Journal of Circuit Theory and Design, Int. J.
Circ. Theor. Appl. 2009.
[28] Xuguang Zhang and Ezz. I. El-Masry "A low voltage body driven
CMOS transconductor," Midwest Symposium Circuits and Systems
MWSCAS; vol.1, pp.328-331, 2002.
[29] J. Ramirez-Angulo; S.C. Choi; G. Gonzalez-Altamirano "Low-voltage
circuits building blocks using multiple-input floating-gate transistors,"
IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Fundamental Theory and
Applications; vol. 42, no. 11, pp. 971 -974, 1995.
[30] Chong-Gun Yu; R. L. Geiger, "Very low voltage operational amplifiers
using floating gate MOS Transistor," IEEE International Symposium on
Circuits and Systems, pp. 1152 -1155, 1993.
[31] G. Giustolisi; G. Palmisano; T. Segreto. "1.2-V CMOS op-amp with a
dynamically biased output stage," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits,
vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 632 -636, 2000.
[32] A.Torralba, R.G. Carvajal, J. Ramirez-Angulo and F. Munoz "Output
stage for low supply voltage, high performance CMOS current mirrors,"
Electronics letters, vol. 38, no. 24, pp.1528-1529, 2002.
[33] Néjib Hassen, Houda Bdiri Gabbouj and Kamel Besbes, "Low voltage
high performance current mirros: application to linear voltage to current
converter," International Journal of Circuit Theory and Design, Int. J.
Circ. Theor. Appl. 2009.
[34] The MOSIS service, "Wafer electrical test dada and spice model
parameters," http://www.mosis.org/test/
[35] Juan Antonio Gómez Galán, Manuel Pedro Carrasco, Melita Pennisi,
Antonio Lopez Martin, Ramon González Carvajal, and Jaime Ramírez-
Angulo, "Low-Voltage Tunable Pseudo-Differential Transconductor
with High Linearity," ETRI Journal, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 576- 584,
October 2009.
@article{"International Journal of Electrical, Electronic and Communication Sciences:60522", author = "Houda Bdiri Gabbouj and Néjib Hassen and Kamel Besbes", title = "Low Voltage High Gain Linear Class AB CMOS OTA with DC Level Input Stage", abstract = "This paper presents a low-voltage low-power differential linear transconductor with near rail-to-rail input swing. Based on the current-mirror OTA topology, the proposed transconductor combines the Flipped Voltage Follower (FVF) technique to linearize the transconductor behavior that leads to class- AB linear operation and the virtual transistor technique to lower the effective threshold voltages of the transistors which offers an advantage in terms of low supply requirement. Design of the OTA has been discussed. It operates at supply voltages of about ±0.8V. Simulation results for 0.18μm TSMC CMOS technology show a good input range of 1Vpp with a high DC gain of 81.53dB and a total harmonic distortion of -40dB at 1MHz for an input of 1Vpp. The main aim of this paper is to present and compare new OTA design with high transconductance, which has a potential to be used in low voltage applications.
", keywords = "Amplifier class AB, current mirror, flipped voltage follower, low voltage.", volume = "5", number = "8", pages = "1102-7", }
