High-Performance Three-Stage Single-Miller CMOS OTA With No Upper Limit of ${C}_{L}$

This brief presents a low-power, area-efficient three-stage CMOS operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) suitable for very large capacitive loads, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${C} _{L}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. A single Miller capacitor and an inverting current buffer embedded in the input stage are exploited to implement the frequency compensation network. An additional feed-forward path and a slew rate enhancer are also utilized to improve the large-signal transient response. Detailed small-signal analysis reveals that the proposed OTA does not exhibit an upper limit of drivable <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${C} _{L}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. The OTA is fabricated in a standard 0.35-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\mu }\text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> technology and occupies 0.0027 mm<sup>2</sup> of die area. Under 1.4-V supply and 6.36-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\mu }\text{A}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> quiescent current consumption, it provides a dc gain greater than 110 dB and is stable for any <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${C} _{L}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> larger than 5 nF. Comparison with the state of the art shows remarkable improvement of both small- and large-signal performance.

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