Circuits and Systems, 2013, 4, 34-43
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/cs.2013.41007 Published Online January 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/cs)
A 0.9 V Supply OTA in 0.18 μm CMOS Technology and Its
Application in Realizing a Tunable Low-Pass Gm-C Filter
for Wireless Sensor Networks
Soolmaz Abbasalizadeh*, Samad Sheikhaei, Behjat Forouzandeh
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Email: *abasalizadeh89@ut.ac.ir
Received October 8, 2012; revised November 22, 2012; accepted November 30, 2012
ABSTRACT
A low voltage low power operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) based on a bulk driven cell and its application
to implement a tunable Gm-C filter is presented. The linearity of the OTA is improved by attenuation and source de-
generation techniques. The attenuation technique is implemented by bulk driven cell which is used for low supply volt-
age circuits. The OTA is designed to operate with a 0.9 V supply voltage and consumes 58.8 μW power. A 600 mVppd
sine wave input signal at 1 MHz frequency shows total harmonic distortion (THD) better than 40 dB over the tuning
range of the transconductance. The OTA has been used to realize a tunable Gm-C low-pass filter with gain tuning from
5 dB to 21 dB with 4 dB gain steps, which results in power consumptions of 411.6 to 646.8 μW. This low voltage filter
can operate as channel select filter and variable gain amplifier (VGA) for wireless sensor network (WSN) applications.
The proposed OTA and filter have been simulated in 0.18 μm CMOS technology. Corner case and temperature simula-
tion results are also included to forecast process and temperature variation affects after fabrication.
Keywords: OTA; Low Voltage; Low Power; Bulk Driven; Gm-C Filter
1. Introduction
Due to the spreading market of portable electronic equip-
ments, low power low voltage circuit design has become
an important goal of electronic circuits industry. Many
applications, like wireless sensor networks (WSNs), need
low supply voltage circuits for proper operation which
results in reducing their weight and increasing their bat-
tery life time. In wireless sensor networks, the voltage of
battery drops over time. Since the nodes in this applica-
tion cannot be easily accessed in some cases, and they
should operate few months or years on a single battery,
they must be designed to operate under low supply volt-
ages to overcome voltage drop issues.
Operational transconductor amplifier (OTA) is an im-
portant building block of many analog circuits like filters,
data converters, etc. This block converts input voltage to
output current with a linear transformation factor. Its fast
speed and bias based tunability makes this block more
appropriate for analog circuits compared with conven-
tional opamps, but it has a linearity limitation drawback.
The linearity of the OTA is an important issue because
the linearity of the overall system would be determined
by this block. This issue becomes very challenging under
the low supply voltage and limited power consumption.
Also, other specications of the OTA would be affected
by low supply voltage. So, novel circuit design tech-
niques should be considered to improve linearity per-
formances of the OTA and overcome the deterioration of
its specications.
In order to improve linearity of the OTA, many tech-
niques have been reported recently, such as attenuation
[1], source degeneration [2-4], nonlinear terms cancella-
tion [5-10], and triode based transconductor [11-13]. In
attenuation technique, the linearity improvement is a-
chieved by reducing input voltage. In this technique
nonlinear terms of output current is reduced by reducing
input voltage. One attenuator that can be used for reduce-
ing input signal is bulk driven transistor. This cell at-
tenuates input signal with γ factor which is the body ef-
fect coefficient and has a value between 0.2 and 0.4 [14].
In the bulk driven cell, the input signal is applied to
bulk of transistor rather than its gate, and by connecting
the gate to an appropriate bias voltage, the channel is
formed. Since, the input signal is applied to bulk, it is not
necessary to spend a part of the input voltage range to
turn the transistor on and this removes the limitation that
is produced by threshold voltage requirements of the
transistors in low voltage designs. So, this cell can be
*Corresponding author.
C
opyright © 2013 SciRes. CS
S. ABBASALIZADEH ET AL. 35
used in low supply voltage circuits. In fact, the bulk
driven cell can improve linearity of the OTA while oper-
ating with reduced supply voltages. In [15] and [16], two
low voltage bulk driven OTAs are reported. However,
these low voltage cells have some drawbacks. The bulk
driven transconductance is 2 to 5 times smaller than that
of the gate driven, based on the technology used. This
issue leads to low DC gain, low gain bandwidth (GBW)
and high input referred noise. Two transconductance en-
hancement techniques based on positive feedback are
reported in [17] to overcome low transconductance value
of the bulk driven transistor.
Source degeneration is another linearity improvement
technique which is implemented by adding resistance at
the source terminal of the input transistors. This tech-
nique increases noise factor of the OTA in trade off with
linearity improvement. Tunablity of the source degener-
ated OTA is also achieved with tuning of the source de-
generated resistance.
In nonlinear terms cancellation technique, linearity
improvement is achieved by an appropriate sum of the
nonlinear terms to cancel out nonlinearity. This tech-
nique is more suitable for low supply voltage circuits,
because pseudo-differential architecture can be used eas-
ier in this technique.
In triode based transconductor, the drain-source volt-
age of input transistors, which is biased in triode region,
is kept constant. As a result, a linear OTA with constant
transconductance is achieved and tunability of the trans-
conductance is carried out by changing the drain-source
voltage of the triode transistors.
Since using these linearization techniques become
very challenging under low supply voltages, some circuit
design methods should be considered for low supply
voltage designs. One of these methods, which is men-
tioned before, is the bulk driven cell. Some other low
voltage circuit design methods are flipped voltage fol-
lower cell (FVF) [18], sub-threshold MOSFET [16],
pseudo-differential pairs [19], and floating gate. In these
methods some of the OTA’s specications such as line-
arity, noise, open loop DC gain, and unity gain band-
width (UGBW) are deteriorated in trade off with reduce-
ing supply voltage. So, appropriate topology and biases
should be used for getting more optimized circuits.
In this work, a low voltage low power bulk driven
OTA is presented. This low voltage OTA can be used for
some applications such as WSNs. The proposed OTA
uses attenuation and source degeneration techniques for
its linearity improvement. By using bulk driven transis-
tors for input pairs, linearity improvement can be achie-
ved while the OTA can operate with reduced supply
voltages. The proposed OTA can operate with a 0.9 V
supply voltage in a 0.18 μm CMOS n-well process. In
order to overcome some drawbacks of using bulk driven
transistors, such as low DC gain, low unity gain band-
width, and high noise, the transconductance enhancement
technique, which is reported in [17], is applied to input
pairs. In [17], this technique is applied to the bulk driven
transistors, too. But no other linearity improvement tech-
nique is applied to input pair for further improving line-
arity. In the proposed OTA, this technique is applied to
source degenerated bulk driven input pair and a self-
cascode structure is used for increasing output impedance
and so the DC gain. Also, in this work, tuning is added to
the OTA for compensating the PVT variations. Tuning of
the proposed OTA is achieved by varying the source de-
generated resistance, which is implemented by a transis-
tor.
As an application of the proposed low voltage low
power OTA, a third-order low-pass Butterworth filter is
designed. This low voltage Gm-C filter acts as a channel
select filter and variable gain amplifier (VGA) for some
wireless sensor network applications, such as those com-
pliant with IEEE 802.15.4 standard, also known as Zig-
Bee. The proposed filter has a gain tuning from 5 dB to
21 dB with 4 dB gain steps.
The rest of this manuscript is organized as follows. In
Section 2, the proposed OTA with circuit details is dis-
cussed. Gm-C filter design and its gain tuning are de-
scribed in Section 3. Section 4 shows the simulated per-
formances of the OTA and filter. Some discussion about
the circuit simulations are made in Section 5. Finally, the
conclusions are drawn in Section 6.
2. Design of the Transconductance
2.1. Design of the Input Stage
In the bulk driven cell, input signal is applied to the bulk
of input transistors rather than their gates. The bulk
driven MOSFET cell acts similar to a JFET. The channel
conductivity is varied by bulk-source voltage and, as a
result, the bulk driven transistor can conduct with zero,
negative, or slightly positive input voltage, similar to a
depletion type device [20]. However, this low voltage
cell has some disadvantages. The transconductance of the
bulk driven transistor is much smaller than that of the
gate driven, and this causes low DC gain, low gain
bandwidth, and high input referred noise. Another dis-
advantage of this cell is that for an n-well process, only
PMOS bulk driven MOSFETs are available. In order to
use NMOS bulk driven MOSFETs, deep n-well layer is
needed to achieve a twin well process. To reduce cost of
circuit implementation, we have used bulk driven PMOS
transistors, in this paper.
Figure 1 shows the input stage of the proposed bulk
driven transconductance, which consists of the bulk
driven fully-differential pair and tuning transistor. Bulk
driven input transistors implement attenuation technique
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. CS
S. ABBASALIZADEH ET AL.
36
for linearity improvement of the OTA, which is appro-
priate for low voltage circuits. The tuning transistor,
which acts as source degenerated resistance, improves
linearity of the OTA and vary the transconductance value
of the OTA for compensation of PVT variations. Al-
though source degeneration technique, increases noise
factor of the OTA, but, in trade off, can reduce third or-
der harmonic distortion. When input transistors operate
in strong inversion region, their drain current is ex-
pressed as follows:
2
1
2
Dp oxSGth
W
ICVV
L



(1)
in which, parameters have their usual meanings and the
channel length modulation is ignored for simplicity. In
the bulk driven transistor, threshold voltage is described
by:
022
ththF BSF
VV V
 

 

(2)
in which, φF is the surface potential, γ is the body effect
coefficient, and Vth0 is threshold voltage when the
bulk-source voltage is zero.
By using Equations (1) and (2), the transconductance
value of the input transistors, not considering the source
degenerated resistance, is given by:
2
22
D
mbP oxD
BS FBS
IW
g
CI
V
V
 
L
(3)
By applying source degeneration technique to the in-
put stage, the transconductance value is changed to:
,1
mb
mb sd
mb
g
g
g
R

(4)
in which, R is the half of the resistance of the source de-
generated transistor. From Equation (4), it is obvious that,
by varying the value of R, the transconductance tuning
can be achieved. Although the source degenerated tech-
nique, reduces transcondactance value by 1 + gmbR factor,
but greatly reduces the third order harmonic distortion
term by factor of (1 + gmbR)2. The third order harmonic
distortion term of the input transistors can be calculated
from Equation (1) to Equation (4), as below.






3
,
3,saturation 3
2
0
2
2
3!
21
1
16 22
Dsat
BS
PoxFSG th
mb
FBS FBS
I
HD
V
CWV V
g
R
LV V



(5)
As can be seen from Equation (5), the third order har-
monic distortion term is attenuated by γ and (1 + gmbR)2
factors, which are related to the bulk driven transistors
and the source degeneration transistor, respectively.
2.2. Complete Design of the Proposed
Transconductance
The complete OTA is demonstrated in Figure 2 which
consists of the transconductance main stage, the common
mode feedback circuit (CMFB), and the bias circuit. In
this figure, all transistors with the same dimensions are
labeled with the same symbols and the tuning transistor
is labeled with SD (source degenerated).
In order to overcome the main bulk driven issue (low
transconductance value), the transconductance enhance-
ment technique is applied to the input pairs [17]. This
technique is implemented by M1, M3, M4, M5 and M6. A
partial positive feedback which is implemented by M3,
reduces the conductance of the node A and increases
gmb,sd by the factor
as below.

34
,,
1
1mM mM
gg
(6)
Because the overall feedback must remain negative,
gm,M4 must be larger than g
m,M3. In fact, by choosing
gm,M3/gm,M4 close to unity, the circuit is very prone to in-
stability, and linear input voltage range becomes small.
So, proper sizing for M3 and M4 should be used to
achieve a stable circuit. The flipped voltage follower
current mirror is used for mirroring current to the output.
At the output stage of the OTA, self-cascode structure,
which is accomplished by M8 and M9, is used for in-
creasing output impedance. In low voltage circuits, it is
not possible to stack transistors for increasing output
impedance. Self-cascode structure is one solution, which
is used in low voltage circuits to increase output imped-
ance [21]. The self-cascode structure has much larger
effective channel length and therefore much lower effect-
tive output conductance. The transistor M9 in this struc-
ture is in linear region and acts as a resistor. For optimal
operation of the structure, the dimension of M8 should be
kept larger than M9. The self-cascode structure is more
Loading ci rc uit s
Vi+ Vi-Vg
Vbias
Vtune
Source de generated
transist or
Figure 1. The input stage of the proposed bulk driven
transconductance.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. CS
S. ABBASALIZADEH ET AL.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. CS
37
Figure 2. The complete OTA (a) The transconductance main stage; (b) The CMFB circuit; (c) The bias circuit.
suitable for low voltage circuits compared with conven-
tional cascode, as it has high output impedance similar to
that of a conventional cascode, while the output voltage
requirements of the self-cascode could be similar to a
single transistor.
is high, the SWp and SWn switches are off and on, re-
spectively. In this mode, the OTA is active and acts nor-
mally. For turning of the OTA, EN signal should go low.
In this mode, the SWn switches are turned off and thus
no current path exists to the ground. On the other hand,
the SWp switches turn on and force PMOS biases to
VDD. So, PMOS transistors turn off and the OTA be-
comes disabled.
Figure 2(b) shows the CMFB circuit, which sets the
dc voltage of the output to Vref. In order to achieve
maximum output swing, output common mode is set to
VDD/2. In the CMFB circuit, the output voltage of the
OTA is averaged by resistance network and is compared
with Vref. The resultant signal adjusts the bias of the
self-cascode structure and set the output dc voltage
around Vref.
2.3. Noise in the Proposed OTA
In this section, the noise performance of the proposed
OTA is studied. Since, the major part of the voltage gain
of the proposed OTA is produced by the output stage, the
main part of the input referred noise is generated by the
input stage. So, the noise of the output stage can be ig-
nored. The total input referred noise of the overall OTA,
which consists of flicker and thermal noise is approxi-
mated as: see Equation (7).
The bias circuit which is used to generate the proper
bias voltages of the OTA is shown in Figure 2(c). In this
figure, the diode connected transistors produce the fixed
voltages of Vbp and Vbn for biasing of PMOS and NMOS
transistors, respectively.
In Figure 2 the transistors SWn and SWp are switches
for turning on and off the OTA for gain tuning of the
filter (will be described in details in Section 3). When EN
In the above equation, Kf is the flicker noise parameter,
K is the Boltzmann constant, T is the temperature, f is the




 
2
2
,1 2346
2
2 222
2
,,,,
1234
2222
1234
8
21
3
21 1
ninmmbmbm mmm
meff
fp satfp satfn satfn satfp s
mmmm
mb mb
ox m effm effm effm eff
KT
VggRgR gggg
g
kkkk
g ggg
gR gR
c fWLWLWLWL
gggg






 
 
 
 
 

,
k
2
6
2
6
at m
meff
g
WL g
 

 


 

 
(7)
S. ABBASALIZADEH ET AL.
38
frequency, gm,eff is η*gmb,sd and other parameters have
their usual meanings. The factor of 2 is considered for
the two halves of the input stage.
Based on Equation (7), although the input referred
noise is increased by the noise contribution of M1 - M4
and M6, which is caused by the transconductance en-
hancement technique, the total input referred noise is
reduced. In fact, by using this technique, the DC gain of
the OTA enhances. Therefore, the input referred noise of
the transistors not involved in this technique is reduced.
Based on Equation (7), the total noise can be reduced by
minimizing the gate transconductance of all transistors
and the current of M6.
3. Gm-C Filter Design
The low voltage OTA, which is described in previously,
can be used as channel selection filter and variable gain
amplifier for the receiver of wireless sensor network ap-
plications. IEEE 802.15.4 or ZigBee is one standard
which is introduced for wireless sensor networks. This
low power standard is deigned for control applications
and wireless sensing. It is also appropriate for comer-
cial uses, industrial and home automation, personal
health care appliances, and many other applications. In
order to satisfy requirements of these articles, the sensors
of ZigBee standard should be able to operate for several
months on button cells or small batteries [22]. Therefore,
the circuits of sensors used in this standard should be low
voltage and low power. Considering a zero-IF architect-
ture for the 2.4 GHz ZigBee receiver and assuming some
margins in channel selection, a third order Butterworth
low-pass filter with more than 2-MHz bandwidth is
needed [22]. This filter provides the requirement of 0-dB
and 30-dB rejections at the adjacent channel (±5 MHz)
and the alternate channel (±10 MHz), respectively [22].
In order to obtain some gain controlling based on the
specifications of the receiver, the related filter should be
able to operate as a variable gain amplifier, too.
Figure 3 shows the structure of the filter designed for
the ZigBee standard. The filter is implemented by cas-
cade of a first-order low-pass stage and a biquad stage
for realizing a complex pole pair. This structure, which is
reported in [23], is more suitable for low voltage circuits
compared with the conventional structure. Because this
structure can increase output swing, which is reduced due
to low supply voltage. Since, the current delivered to
each capacitor of the filter is the same as that of the con-
ventional ones, the new structure does not change the cut
off frequency and quality factor of the filter. Due to re-
ceiving the signal with the same amplitude and phase in
both inputs of the OTA in this structure, the total voltage
swing at the inputs of each transconductance is reduced
compared with conventional structure and this relieves
the need for a high-swing OTA.
Gain tuning of the filter can be obtained based on the
fact that by increasing the number of parallel gm blocks,
the transconductance value increases linearly. In fact, by
tuning the resistance of the transistor used as degenera-
tion, and by parallelizing the first OTA of each stage in
the filter by a similar OTA, gain variation is achieved.
In Figure 3, the switches, which are controlled by
EN<i> signal, are implemented by transistors. When the
cotrolling signal goes high, the related OTA is activated
and increases the gm value and also, gain of the filter.
En<1-3> and EN<1-2> refer to the control of three and
two OTAs that are placed in parallel, and can be turned
Figure 3. The implementation of the third order low-pass filter.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. CS
S. ABBASALIZADEH ET AL. 39
on and off individually to obtain the required gain value.
The frequency response of the filter is derived as:
where,



113
2
2423
12
22
00
2π
mmmAB
mmA mmAB
c
HS
gC ggCC
sg C
s
sgCg gCC
kk
sf
ss Q





(8)
22
22
02π,2
c
fQ

 (9)
in which, σ, ω are the real and imaginary parts of the
complex pole, and fc is the cut off frequency of the filter,
k1 and k2 are the gain values and other parameters have
their usual meanings. Based on Equation (8), it is obvi-
ous that by varying the transconductance value of 1m
g
and 1m
g
, the gain tunability of the filter can be achieved
without any variation in the cut off frequency.
4. Simulation Results
4.1. Simulation Results of the OTA
The transconductor and the filter were simulated in a
standard 0.18 μm CMOS n-well process with a 0.9 V
power supply voltage. The OTA consumes 58.8 μW and
10.6 nW in on and off modes, respectively. The Vtune of
the tuning transistor can be varied from 0 to 130 mV to
obtain transconductance values of 41.5 μS to 29.7 μS.
This 40% tuning can be used for compensating the PVT
variations, and also at the same time for tuning the gain
of the filter. The tuning of the transconductance value
versus differential input voltages is demonstrated in Fig-
ure 4.
The simulated THD of the OTA is achieved respec-
tively as 55.4 dB, 51.2 dB, and 47.1 dB, by applying 400
mVppd, 500 mVppd, and 600 mVppd differential input sig-
nals with 1 MHz frequency. For THD simulations, the
Vtune of the tuning transistor is set at 65 mV that is in
the middle of the tuning range. Also, simulations show
that the THD of the OTA over tuning range of the trans-
conductance, for input amplitude of less than 600 mVppd,
remains below 40 dB.
The input referred noise of the OTA is simulated at 1
MHz frequency and is calculated as 108 nV/Hz for
Vtune of 0 V, which increases to 148.3 nV/Hz for
Vtune of 130 mV. This noise is measured in fully-dif-
ferential condition, and the large value of it, is due to the
bulk driven cell and low supply voltage. In fact, this high
noise value can be ignored in trade off with lowering
supply voltage and power consumption. The unit of
nV/Hz comes from the dependency of noise to fre-
quency. The noise power density is calculated in voltage
squared per hertz, and is called noise power spectral den-
sity (PSD) and its rms value is reported in V/Hz. The
common mode rejection ration (CMRR) of the OTA for
Vtune of 65 mV is simulated as 139.8 dB, which is
measured for a single-ended output. This CMRR will be
much higher for differential outputs.
Table 1 contains a summary of the OTA performances.
Corner case simulations of the OTA are summarized in
Table 2. Process and temperature worst case perform-
ances of the proposed transconductance are shown in
Table 3. The temperature of the OTA is varied from
40˚C to 70˚C. As can be seen in these tables, the OTA
shows proper operation in process and temperature varia-
tions. Performance comparison of the OTA with recently
published work are presented in Table 4. For better
comparison, a figure of merit (FOM) which is defined in
[10] is used. In this FOM, shown in Equation (10),
Figure 4. Transconductance tuning versus differential input
voltage.
Table 1. Performance summary of the proposed OTA.
Specication Value
Technology Standard 0.18 μm CMOS
Power supply 0.9 V
Power consumption (μW) On mode = 58.8
Off mode = 0.01
THD (dB) 55.4, 51.2, 47.1*
Input referred noise
(nV/Hz) in tuning range 108 - 148.3@1 MHz
DC gain (dB)** 34.8
Unity gain bandwidth (MHz)** 11
CMRR (dB)** 139.8
PSRR+ (dB)** 82.7
PSRR (dB)** 47.8
*At 400, 500 and 600 mVppd input signal, respectively, @1 MHz (Vtune =
65 mV); **Cload = 1 pF and Vtune = 65 mV; Note: CMRR and PSRR val-
ues are reported for a single ended output. Differential output values are
much higher.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. CS
S. ABBASALIZADEH ET AL.
40
Table 2. Corner case simulations of the OTA.
TT SS SF FS FF
Power consumption (μW) 58.8 Off = 0.00155.9 Off = 0.000658.7 Off = 0.000658.4 Off = 0.2 60.5 Off = 0.2
THD (dB) (500 mVppd input signal)* 51.2 48.8 42.8 49.8 44.6
Input referred noise (nV/Hz)* 115 124.6 109.2 123.5 120.9
*@1 MHz, Vtune = 65 mV.
Table 3. Process and temperature worst case performances of the proposed OTA.
Min Typical Max
Power consumption in on mode (μW) 48.8 58.8 65.2
THD (dB) for 500 mVppd input signal* 55.7 51.2 40.1
Input referred noise (nV/Hz)* 111.7 115 149.4
*@1 MHz, Vtune = 65 mV.
Table 4. Performance summary of the OTA and comparison with recently published work.
Year Technology/input
structure
Supply
voltage (V)
Input voltage
range (mVppd)
THD of output
current (dB)
Power
consumption
(W)
Input referred noise
(nV/Hz )
Transconductance
value (μS) FOM FOM/VDD
2007 [5] 0.18 μm/ Gate
driven 1 400 70@1 MHz2.5 m 13 1000 87 87
2008 [10] 0.18 μm/ Gate
driven 1.5 900
60 IM3
@40 MHz
Or 69.5 THD
9.5 m 23 470 97.264.8
2011 [16] 0.18 μm/ Bulk
driven 0.5 500 - 60 μ 80@1 MHz - - -
2011 [20] 0.18 μm/ Bulk
driven 1 800 55
@1 MHz
70 μ
Vtune = 0.43 V- 5.6 75.575.5
This work 0.18 μm/ Bulk
driven 0.9 600
55.35, 51.2,
47.1* 58.8 μ 115 (Full diff)**38.8 79.588.36
*At 400, 500 and 600 mVppd input signal, respectively (@1 MHz, Vtune = 65 mV); **@1 MHz, Vtune = 65 mV.
transconductance value, linearity performance, speed of
the circuit, input swing amplitude, and power consump-
tion are considered.
0
10log mid
GVTHDf
FOM P
 
(10)
We have also included a new measure, defined as
FOM/VDD, in this table to account for the effect supply
voltage reduction. As can be seen, by including the effect
of supply voltage, it is obvious that the proposed OTA
compares well with the others.
4.2. Simulation Results of the Gm-C Filter
The filter is designed for cut off frequency of more than
1 MHz. This condition guarantees that the filter never
removes desired signal power. This consideration is
mentioned as the design should be able to compensate
the transfer function distortion of the filter (i.e., reduction
of the cut off frequency). This distortion comes from
truning on the parallel transconductors which leads to
reducing output impedance of the related stage.
Figure 5 shows the frequency response of the third
order Butterworth low-pass filter over gain tuning of the
filter. This filter has gain tuning from 5 dB to 21 dB with
4 dB gain steps. As can be seen in this figure, the cut off
frequency of the filter is more than 1 MHz in complete
range of the gain tuning. The proposed filter achieves
attenuation of 32.1 dB and 50.2 dB at 5 MHz and 10
MHz, respectively for a 5 dB gain of the filter. The pro-
posed filter consumes 411.6 μW to 646.8 μW powers for
5 dB to 21 dB gains of the filter.
The input referred noise of the filter is simulated as 67
nV/Hz at maximum gain of the filter, which is in-
creased to 167.1 nV/Hz at minimum gain. This noise
value seems good for bulk driven filter with low supply
voltage. The simulated in-band IIP3 of the filter is shown
in Figure 6 which is 10.75 dBm at a 5 dB gain. This IIP3
value is measured with two input tones of 0.99 MHz and
1.01 MHz. The simulations show that the IIP3 is reduced
to 7 dBm at 21 dB gain of the filter.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. CS
S. ABBASALIZADEH ET AL. 41
-8 -6 -4 -202468-1010
-35
-25
-15
-5
5
15
-45
25
H
Magnitude (dB)
Frequency (MHz)
(a)
-1.5-1.0-0.50.0 0.5 1.01.5-2.0 2.0
0
5
10
15
20
-5
25
H
Magnitude (dB)
Frequency (MHz)
(b)
Figure 5. Frequency response of the third order low-pass
filter. (a) Total response; (b) Zoom in on the pass band of
the frequency response
-35 -30 -25-20 -15-10-50510-401
5
-120
-100
-80
-60
-40
-20
0
-140
20
Pout (dBm)
Pin (dBm)
Fundamental
In-band IM3
Figure 6. In-band IIP3 calculation for a 5 dB gain of the
filter.
The simulated performances of the filter are listed in
Table 5. Corner case simulations of the filter are pre-
sented in Table 6. Corner cases and temperature varia-
tions from 40˚C to 70˚C are simulated as well, and
show IIP3 better than 7 dBm, cut off frequency better
than 1.2 MHz, attenuation at 5 MHz better than 31 dB
and attenuation at 10 MHz better than 49.2 dB, in worst
cases, for 5 dB gain of the filter. These values show that
the filter operates properly in process and temperature
variations. In order to compensate corner case and tem-
perature variations, the Vtune of the tuning transistor is
adjusted to obtain appropriate gain of filter and cut off
frequency more than 1 MHz. The performance compare-
son of the filter with recently published work is included
in Table 7. Performances of the proposed filter are cal-
culated at 5 dB gain of the filter. For better comparison, a
figure of merit (FOM) is used as follows [24]:
23
3
43 ,
C
N
c
P
IIP
N
FOMSFDR P
f SFDRN

 




(11)
in which, Pc is the power consumption of the lter, N is
the number of poles and zeros, fc is the cutoff frequency
Table 5. Performance summary of the proposed filter.
Specication Value
Technology 0.18 μm CMOS
Power supply 0.9 V
Filter type 3rd order low-pass Butterworth
Cut off frequency (MHz) More than 1
Gain tuning (dB) 5 to 21
Attenuation (dB) 32.1@5 MHz*
50.2@10 MHz*
Power consumption (μW) 411.6, 646.8**
Differential output swing (V)0.86*
IIP3 (dBm) 10.75, 7**
Input referred noise @1 MHz
(nV/ Hz) 67, 167.1**
*At 5 dB gain of the filter; **At 5 dB and 21 dB gain of filter, respectively.
Table 6. Corner case simulation results of the filter (Vtune
is adjusted per corner case to obtain gain = 5 dB and fc > 1
MHz).
Performances at 5 dB gain of the
filter TT SS SF FS FF
IIP3 (dBm) 10.75 9.5 11.5 11 11.5
Noise figure (dB) 45.2 46 45.7 45.845.26
Cut off frequency (MHz) 1.4 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3
Attenuation (dB) @5 MHz 32.1 34.3 32.7 34.432.7
Attenuation(dB) @10 MHz 50.2 52.4 50.8 52.450.9
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. CS
S. ABBASALIZADEH ET AL.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. CS
42
Table 7. Performance summary of the filter and comparison with recently published work.
FOM*
VDD
FOM
(fJ)
Cut off frequency
(MHz)
Order of
low-pass filter
Input referred noise
(nV/Hz)
IIP3 (dBm)
Power
consumption (W)
VDD (V)
Technology/
input structure
Year
0.02* 0.02*
8.1 - 13.5 6 (Diff) 75 21.7 - 22.14.35 m 1
90 nm/gate
driven
2011 [24]
1.85* 1.54*
0.5 - 20 3 12 - 425 19 - 22.34.1 m - 11.1 m 1.2
0.18 μm/gate
driven
2009 [25]
- - 1.4 - 6 3 171 (@1 MHz) - 326 μ 0.5
0.18 μm/bulk
driven
2011 [16]
0.37** 0.41**
1 3 (Diff) 167.1@1 MHz**
10.75** 411.6 μ** 0.9
0.18 μm/bulk
driven
This work
*Average of FOM, **@5 dB gain.
and the SFDR.N4/3 expression is the normalized spurious
free dynamic range [24]. For a better comparison of the
designs, the average of the FOM is used for filters with
cut off frequency tuning. In contrast with the FOM de-
fined for the OTA in Equation (10), the lower FOM in
Equation (11) shows a better design. Therefore, for tak-
ing effects of supply voltage into account, FOM*VDD is
included also in Table 7. This table shows that the pro-
posed filter compares favorably with others.
5. Discussion/Analysis
In this paper, a 0.9 V supply transconductance with bulk
driven input pairs is represented. A range of 40% tuning
of the transconductance value is achieved by varying the
source degeneration resistance, which is also used for
further improving linearity. This tuning can be used for
compensating PVT variations and achieving gain tuning
for a third order Butterworth low-pass filter. Further gain
tuning of the filter is achieved by parallelizing of trans-
conductor blocks. Using these two methods the gain of
the filter can be tuned from 5 dB to 21 dB.
The OTA and filter are simulated in a standard 0.18
μm CMOS technology. The OTA consumes 58.8 μW and
filter consumes 411.6 μW to 646.8 μW powers for 5 dB
to 21 dB gains. The OTA shows input reffered noise of
108 nV/Hz to 148.3 nV/Hz over tuning range of the
transconductance value, which is due to the resistance
variation of the tuning transistor. The filter shows 167.1
nV/Hz input reffered noise and 10.75 dBm IIP3 at 5 dB
gain, too. Process corners and temperature variations
from 40˚C to 70˚C are also studied in the paper to fore-
cast the operation of the OTA and filter after fabrication.
The simulations show good stability in all process cor-
ners and temperatures.
6. Conclusions
A low supply transconductance with bulk driven input
pair is proposed in this work. Linearity improvement of
the OTA is done by attenuation and source degeneration
techniques. Attenuation is implemented by a bulk driven
cell, which is used to overcome the threshold voltage
limitations of the transistor in low supply voltage circuits.
A transconductance enhancement technique is applied to
the input pairs of the transconductor to ovecome some
drawbacks of the bulk diven cell, including low trans-
conductance value, low DC gain, and high noise. The
high noise drawback of the bulk driven cell could be fur-
ther reduced by some noise cancellation technique. A self
cascode structure is also applied to the output stage of the
transconductor for further enhancing the DC gain.
As an application of the proposed low voltage OTA, a
third order low-pass filter is implemented. The gain of
the filter can be tuned. This tunable filter can be used as a
channel select filter and variable gain amplifier for wire-
less sensor network (WSN) applications. The simulation
results prove that the proposed design satisfies the re-
quired performance of the ZigBee standard, used for
wireless sensor network applications.
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