An adaptive slew rate and dead zone ring amplifier

Abstract

This paper presents an adaptive ring amplifier that introduces a degree of freedom in speed/stabilization design trade-off in the original ring amplifier. It also introduces an area efficient solution for the auto-zeroing stability problem that the conventional ring amplifier suffers from. The proposed adaptive ring amplifier improves the linearity by 10dB at the same operating frequency. Moreover, it achieves a 40% improvement in the operating frequency for the same linearity and settling requirements. The proposed ring amplifier has been implemented and simulated in a low-cost CMOS 130nm technology while operating from a single 1.2V supply. It has a 98% area reduction compared to the conventional ring amplifier for the same stability conditions.