A High-IIP3 Third-Order Elliptic Filter With Current-Efficient Feedforward-Compensated Opamps

Abstract

A low-distortion active filter is realized using current-efficient feedforward-compensated operational amplifiers in the integrators and feedforward current injection in the summing amplifier. A third-order elliptic low-pass filter with two possible bandwidth settings of 17 and 8.5 MHz consumes 1.8 mW from a 1.8-V supply and occupies 0.17 <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\hbox{mm}^{2}$</tex></formula> in a 0.18- <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\mu\hbox{m}$</tex></formula> CMOS process. The measured maximum signal-to-noise and distortion ratios at the two bandwidth settings are 50.5 and 52.5 dB, respectively. The corresponding third-order intermodulation intercept points (IIP3) are <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$+$</tex></formula> 28.2 and <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$+$</tex></formula> 30.8 dBm. Automatic tuning is used at the startup to counter process variations and set the bandwidth accurately.