0.13-µm CMOS tunable transconductor based on the body-driven gain boosting technique with application in Gm-C filters

Abstract

We present a low-voltage low-power CMOS tunable transconductor exploiting body gain boosting to increase the small-signal output resistance. As a distinctive feature, the proposed scheme allows the OTA transconductance to be tuned via the current biasing the gain-boosting circuit. The proposed transconductor has been designed in a 0.13-µm CMOS technology and powered from a 1.2-V supply. To show a possible application, a 0.5-MHz tunable third order Chebyshev low pass filter suitable for the Ultra Low Power Bluetooth Standard has been designed. The filter simulations show that all the requirements of the chosen standard are met, with good performance in terms of linearity, noise and power consumption.