Stability and PSR(Power-Supply Rejection) Models for Design Optimization of Capacitor-less LDO Regulators

LDO(Low Drop-Out) regulators have become an essential building block in modern PMIC(Power Managment IC) to extend battery life of electronic devices. In this paper, we optimize capacitor-less LDO regulator via Geometric Programming(GP) designed using Dongbu HiTek BCDMOS process. GP-compatible models for stability and PSR of LDO regulators are derived based on monomial formulation of transistor characteristics. Average errors between simulation and the proposed model are 9.3 % and 13.1 %, for phase margin and PSR, respectively. Based on the proposed models, the capacitor-less LDO optimization can be performed by changing the PSR constraint of the design. The GP-compatible performance models developed in this work enables the design automation of capacitor-less LDO regulator for different design target specification.