A Compact Low-Offset Instrumentation Amplifier with Wide Input and Output Ranges

In this work, a new architecture for the design of very compact instrumentation amplifiers is proposed. The amplifier has been specifically developed for use as a versatile block for sensor interfacing. The most innovative feature of the proposed cell is the wide input common mode range, which has a margin to both power rails as small as 200 mV. The circuit, which has been implemented with the 3.3 V CMOS devices of the UMC 0.18 μm process, operates with supply voltage in the 1.4–3.6 V range. An input offset voltage standard deviation of 8 μV has been obtained using chopper modulation combined with gain enhancement of the output current mirrors. The amplifier performances are estimated by means of accurate electrical simulations.

[1]  Kofi A. A. Makinwa,et al.  A Current-Feedback Instrumentation Amplifier With a Gain Error Reduction Loop and 0.06% Untrimmed Gain Error , 2011, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[2]  Johan H. Huijsing,et al.  Indirect Current Feedback Instrumentation Amplifier with a Common Mode Input Range That Includes the Negative Rail , 1992, ESSCIRC '92: Eighteenth European Solid-State Circuits conference.

[3]  Massimo Piotto,et al.  A compact instrumentation amplifier for MEMS thermal sensor interfacing , 2012 .

[4]  Refet Firat Yazicioglu,et al.  A 60 $\mu$W 60 nV/$\surd$Hz Readout Front-End for Portable Biopotential Acquisition Systems , 2007, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[5]  J. Szynowski.  CMRR analysis of instrumentation amplifiers , 1983 .

[6]  F. Del Cesta,et al.  A wide input range instrumentation amplifier for impedance spectroscopy applications , 2013, Proceedings of the 2013 9th Conference on Ph.D. Research in Microelectronics and Electronics (PRIME).

[7]  A. T. Van Zanten.  An accurate integrated voltage-to-current converter , 1975 .

[8]  Fabio Sebastiano,et al.  17.5 A 0.07mm2 2-channel instrumentation amplifier with 0.1% gain matching in 0.16μm CMOS , 2014, 2014 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers (ISSCC).

[9]  Massimo Piotto,et al.  A very compact CMOS instrumentation amplifier with nearly rail-to-rail input common mode range , 2014, ESSCIRC 2014 - 40th European Solid State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC).