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question on diff amp (Read 180 times)
bharat
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question on diff amp
Mar 19th, 2006, 9:22am
 
I am having conventional differential amplifier with pmos current mirror as load, nmos diff pair and nmos tail current. My Vcc in worst case goes down to 0.945 V (1.05 V typical). As my Vt drop is close to the same my Vcc (3xVt approx equal to 0.945) plus Vod (overdrive voltage), my current mirror, diff pair or nmos tail has to go out of saturation.
My question is, which one I can bear to be out of saturation (I understand, ideally none) and still I can get close to ideal diff amp performance, i.e. minimum offset, better gain, bandwidth & less propagation delay.

thanks
-Bharat
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Raul
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Re: question on diff amp
Reply #1 - Mar 20th, 2006, 4:56pm
 
I think you should use a folded cascode in order to avoid having your nmos input pair going into triode. I don't know how you are going to get this circuit to operate over temperature though, since Vt generally varies between 1 and 2 mV per degree celsius. If you have low-vt devices or natural nmos devices you should use them.
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regards, Raul Perez
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icarus
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Re: question on diff amp
Reply #2 - Mar 23rd, 2006, 11:34pm
 
Hello Bharat,

I would think if you have to do a tradeoff, I would compromise on the tail current source. As long as you are not worried too much about high frequency CMRR, it should be okay. Simulate and check.
 All teh best.
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Paul
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Re: question on diff amp
Reply #3 - Mar 24th, 2006, 5:12am
 
Hi Bharat,

if your diff pair or the load go out of saturation, this will directly affect your gain due to the increase of output conductance in the triode region. In that sense I can only confirm Icarus' statement to accept operating the tail current source in linear region. However in this case, your bias current will be supply, temperature and input common-mode dependent, which affects the gain-bandwidth product through the variation of transconductance and is not ideal either.

You may want to modify your bias current mirror so that it can work in linear regime without being subject to channel length modulation effects. For this, you need to monitor the current source's drain voltage and apply the same to the drain of the "diode-connected" mirror transistor through a cascode device, as shown in the following paper:
A high compliance CMOS current source for low voltage applications
Quarantelli, M.; Poles, M.; Pasotti, M.; Rolandi, P.;
ISCAS '03

Paul
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Rajesh
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Re: question on diff amp
Reply #4 - Mar 26th, 2006, 8:17pm
 
Bharath,
     try a pmos input pair since u can avoid body effect.
Having tail current in linear region may not be a good idea and  will be decided by ur input common mode voltage. If PMOS input pairs alone is not doing the job then I will go for a folded cascode with top most current mirror txtrs(where u connect ur input pair's drain) biased in linear .
All the best.
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Thnx-n-Regrds,
Rajesh
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