(3)
Ideally, for k = 4,
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discharged) and discharged (or charged) respectively by SRE
devices. The switching operation of these devices can kick- I1
back noise to the input of the SRE Opamp which is also the
input of the main opamp degrading settling performance of M3 M4
the circuit. This is particularly a concern in switched capacitor P_Pulldn P_Pullup N_Pullup
M5 M6 N_Pulldn M12 M13
circuits where large transients are expected. Also, the low gain Vout_P
N_Pullup
of the amplifier stage means that the SRE devices are turned P_Pullup Vout_N
on slowly and hence this would also affect the transient Vin+ M1 M2 Vin- P_Pulldn M10 M11 N_Pulldn
response. I2
M7 I1
Figure 4 shows the schematic of our proposed SRE circuit. M8
The slewing condition is detected by the SRE Opamp which M9 I2
controls the switches in series with the current sources. The
current sources are turned-on and they would assist in either Figure 4. Schematic of the proposed Slew Rate Enhancement technique
pulling up or pulling down the output. The main concern is to
reliably detect the slewing condition. The SRE auxiliary Also, our proposed circuit uses diode connected load
Opamp should be designed such that it starts slewing at the devices [11] and mirrors the signal in current mode. This
same time as the main Opamp does. This goal is achieved by means that the switching in the detection stage is decreased
matching the input devices of main and SRE amplifiers. In the and the kick-back noise is drastically reduced. Unlike the
auxiliary amplifier this condition generates a logic signal to approach used in [11], the output is converted to a logic level
inject extra current when slewing is detected. The layout signal to drive switches M10-M13 in order to source/sink
matching can be ensured by orientation and proximity. The current to the output. Therefore, as it is shown in the next
current sources can be replaced by resistors which simply pull section, using similar sizes for SRE devices, a faster response
the output node towards either rail. can be achieved.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
The proposed opamp with adaptive biasing scheme and slew
rate enhancement was designed and laid out in 0.18µm Jazz
process. Figure 5 shows the variation in unity-gain-bandwidth
and gm respectively. An off-chip precision resistor of 18kΩ is
used to set the DC biasing point.
VB2
M3 M4
I2 I2
Figure 5. Variation of Gm across the temperature range
M6 M7 M8 M9
Figure 6 shows the transient slew rate of the Opamp before
Vin+ M1 M2 Vin- and after using the auxiliary SRE circuit. The slew rate is
Vout_N
Vout_P improved from 25 V/us to 150 V/us by using the proposed
2I1 M10 M11 M12 M13
technique. The achievable slew rate depends on the sizes of
VB1
M5 the SRE devices i.e. M10-M13.
Figure 7 compares the slew rate enhancement in proposed
Figure 3. Nagaraj slew rate enhancement circuit described in [9] and [10]
technique with the ones suggested in [9] and [10]. With
similar sized SRE devices, using the proposed technique, the
circuit enters small signal settling regime much faster than the
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circuit shown in Figure3. Both methods show similar steady VI. CONCLUSIONS
state error as it is governed by small signal settling only but it This paper presents a method of enhancing the slew rate of
can be inferred that the proposed circuit can be clocked at a an operational amplifier. It was shown that the proposed
higher speed. Therefore, the technique shown in this paper technique has a faster settling compared to the prior work. The
would be more suitable for higher speed switched-capacitor proposed method can be used in conjunction with the
circuits especially in sigma-delta modulators. constant-gm biasing technique to ensure the robust operation
of Opamp across large temperature variation.
The proposed technique is especially useful for Opamps
driving large capacitive loads. The power consumption would
reduce significantly as the static power is determined by
settling requirement instead of Opamp driving capability. The
hybrid biasing scheme guarantees minimal variation for unity-
gain bandwidth as well as transconductance of the Opamp.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by Jet Propulsion Lab under
SURP program. The authors would like to thank M. Mojarradi
for his technical support and assistance during this project.
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