An adaptive slew rate and dead zone ring amplifier

• Published in: 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) pp. 305 - 308
• Main Authors: Megawer, Karim M., Hussien, Faisal A., Aboudina, Mohamed M., Mohieldin, Ahmed N.
• Format: Conference Proceeding Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-05-2016
• Subjects: Amplification; Capacitance; Capacitors; CMOS; Degrees of freedom; Inverters; Linearity; Mathematical analysis; Resistors; Settling; Stability; Stability analysis; Time factors; Tradeoffs; Transistors
• ISSN: 2379-447X
• DOI: 10.1109/ISCAS.2016.7527231

This paper presents an adaptive ring amplifier that introduces a degree of freedom in speed/stabilization design trade-off in the original ring amplifier. It also introduces an area efficient solution for the auto-zeroing stability problem that the conventional ring amplifier suffers from. The proposed adaptive ring amplifier improves the linearity by 10dB at the same operating frequency. Moreover, it achieves a 40% improvement in the operating frequency for the same linearity and settling requirements. The proposed ring amplifier has been implemented and simulated in a low-cost CMOS 130nm technology while operating from a single 1.2V supply. It has a 98% area reduction compared to the conventional ring amplifier for the same stability conditions.