A Bulk Driven Three Stage Transconductance Amplifier

Introduction
Portable devices in Bio-medical and sensor applications need to consume Very less power As They
need to monitor whole day. Low supply Voltage is famous technique for Very low power
consumption in Analog IC design. But Conventional OTA’s with gate driven are inactive at Low
supply voltage as Gate-Source voltage is less than threshold voltage and Also scaling of threshold
voltage is very less as compared to scaling of device dimensions.
With the advent of bulk driven amplifier, Subthreshold supply voltage IC design has been researched
with focus on reducing power consumption. Bulk driven amplifiers are active at Subthreshold voltage
because of their negative threshold voltage.
Aggressive scaling of device dimensions has led to reduce in intrinsic gain. It will limit precision of
devices. At Subthreshold voltage Bulk driven OTA has small transconductance and low output
impedance and hence low DC gain. Conventional Cascode technique is not suitable for gain
improvement due to headroom voltage. There are so many techniques to enhance DC gain.
Circuit diagrams

VDD VDD VDD VDD VDD

M8 M9
M10 M11 M12

M4 M6
M1 M2 RC CC
IBias VP VN

M7

M3 M5

Fig. 1: Conventional Bulk driven OTA

VDD VDD VDD VDD VDD

M10 M11 M12 M13 M14

M1 M3 M7 C01
M5
Ibias VP VN

M2 M4
VN VP
Cc

M6 M8 M9 CL

Fig. 2: Two stage positive feedback OTA

 VDD VDD VDD VDD VDD VDD VDD
VDD
M9 M11 M13
M14 M15 M16 M17 M18

M1 M2
IBias M6 M7 M8 M10 M12
M4

CL

M3 M5

M19 M20 M21 M22 M23

CC

Fig. 3: Three stage indirect feedback OTA