Variable-gain amplifier for ultra-low voltage applications in 130nm CMOS technology

The paper deals with design and analysis of a variable-gain amplifier (VGA) working with a very low supply voltage, which is targeted for low-power applications. The proposed amplifier was designed using the bulk-driven approach, which is suitable for ultra-low voltage circuits. Since the power supply voltage is less than 0.6 V, there is no risk of latchup that is usually the main drawback of bulk-driven topologies. The proposed VGA was designed in 130 nm CMOS technology with the supply voltage of 0.4 V. The achieved results indicate that gain of the designed VGA can be varied from 0 dB to 18 dB. Therefore, it can be effectively used in the many applications such as automatic gain control loop with ultra-low value of supply voltage, where the dynamic range is the important parameter.

[2]  Takafumi Yamaji,et al.  A Temperature Stable CMOS Variable Gain Amplifier with 80-dB Linearly Controlled Gain Range , 2001 .

[3]  Guido Torelli,et al.  1-V Rail-to-Rail CMOS OpAmp With Improved Bulk-Driven Input Stage , 2007, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[4]  Fabian Khateb,et al.  Low-voltage bulk-driven rectifier for biomedical applications , 2013, Microelectron. J..

[5]  Costas Psychalinos,et al.  0.5 V bulk-driven analog building blocks , 2012 .

[6]  T. Itakura,et al.  A temperature stable CMOS variable gain amplifier with 80-dB linearly controlled gain range , 2001, VLSIC 2001.

[7]  Chorng-Kuang Wang,et al.  A 3.3-V CMOS wideband exponential control variable-gain-amplifier , 1998, ISCAS '98. Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (Cat. No.98CH36187).

[8]  Jafar Sobhi,et al.  A novel low power high CMRR pseudo-differential CMOS OTA with common-mode feedforward technique , 2015, 2015 23rd Iranian Conference on Electrical Engineering.

[9]  Guido Torelli,et al.  A Family of Low-Voltage Bulk-Driven CMOS Continuous-Time CMFB Circuits , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

[10]  Guido Torelli,et al.  Low-voltage rail-to-rail bulk-driven CMFB network with improved gain and bandwidth , 2010, 2010 17th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems.

[11]  Songcheol Hong,et al.  A Wideband CMOS Variable Gain Amplifier With an Exponential Gain Control , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.