Energy-Efficient Amplifiers Based on Quasi-Floating Gate Techniques

Abstract

Energy efficiency is a key requirement in the design of amplifiers for modern wireless applications. The use of quasi-floating gate (QFG) transistors is a very convenient approach to achieve such energy efficiency. We illustrate different QFG circuit design techniques aimed to implement low-voltage, energy-efficient class AB amplifiers. A new super class AB QFG amplifier is presented as a design example, including some of the techniques described. The amplifier has been fabricated in a 130 nm CMOS test chip prototype. Measurement results confirm that low-voltage, ultra-low-power amplifiers can be designed, preserving, at the same time, excellent small-signal and large-signal performance.

Low-Voltage CMOS Bulk-Driven Buffer With Bootstrapping Technique for Gain Enhancement and THD-Noise Reduction

“…As a result, the performance of the cell is improved. The approach is similar to the quasi-floating gate transistor technique [7] in the sense that it requires a large resistor and a capacitor but, to the best of the Authors knowledge, this technique has not been proposed to reduce (increase) a conductance (resistance) using bootstrapping. Also in [8] several similar structures are presented, but the main principle of operation proposed here is different and novel.…”