Abstract
A current-efficient, capacitor-less low-dropout regulator (LDO) with fast-transient response for portable applications is presented in this chapter. It makes use of an adaptive biasing common-gate amplifier to extend loop bandwidth of the LDO at heavy loads greatly. Also, the dynamic push-pull (DPP) slew-rate enhancement (SRE) circuit based on capacitive coupling detects rapid voltage spikes at the output to provide an extra current to charge and discharge the large gate capacitance of the power transistor momentarily. The proposed circuit has been implemented in a 0.35μm standard CMOS process. Experimental results show that it can deliver 100mA load current at 150mV dropout voltage. It only consumes 10μA quiescent current at no-load condition and is able to recover within 0.8μs even under the maximum load current change.
Keywords
Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Rincon-Mora, G.A., Allen, P.E.: A low-voltage, low quiescent current, low drop-out regulator. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits 33(1), 36–44 (1998)
Leung, K.N., Mok, P.K.T.: A capacitor-free CMOS low-dropout regulator with damping-factor-control frequency compensation. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits 38(10), 1691–1702 (2003)
Lau, S.K., Mok, P.K.T., Leung, K.N.: A low-dropout regulator for SoC with Q-reduction. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits 42(4), 658–664 (2007)
Man, T.Y., Leung, K.N., Leung, C.Y., Mok, P.K.T., Chan, M.: Development of single-transistor-control LDO based on flipped voltage follower for SoC. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. I, Reg. Papers 55(5), 1392–1401 (2008)
Lin, H.-C., Wu, H.-H., Chang, T.-Y.: An active-frequency compensation scheme for CMOS low-dropout regulators with transient-response improvement. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, Exp. Briefs 55(9), 853–857 (2008)
Ho, M., Leung, K.N., Mak, K.-L.: A low-power fast-transient 90-nm low-dropout regulator with multiple small-gain stages. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits 45(11), 2466–2475 (2010)
Lin, C.-H., Chen, K.-H., Huang, H.-W.: Low-Dropout Regulators With Adaptive Reference Control and Dynamic Push–Pull Techniques for Enhancing Transient Performance. IEEE Trans. Power Electron. 24(4), 1016–1022 (2009)
Lee, H., Mok, P.K.T., Leung, K.N.: Design of low-power analog drivers based on slew-rate enhancement circuits for CMOS low-dropout regulators. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, Exp. Briefs 52(9), 563–567 (2005)
Hazucha, P., Karnik, T., Bloechel, B.A., Parsons, C., Finan, D., Borkar, S.: Area-efficient linear regulator with ultra-fast load regulation. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits 40(4), 933–940 (2005)
Al-Shyoukh, M., Lee, H., Perez, R.: A transient-enhanced low-quiescent current low-dropout regulator with buffer impedance attenuation. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits 42(8), 1732–1742 (2007)
Lam, Y.H., Ki, W.H.: A 0.9 V 0.35 μm adaptively biased CMOS LDO regulator with fast transient response. In: Proc. IEEE Int. Solid-State Circuits Conf., pp. 442–626 (2008)
Zhan, C., Ki, W.H.: Output-capacitor-free adaptively biased low-dropout regulator for system-on-chips. IEEE Trans. Circuits and Systems I, Reg. Papers 57(5), 1017–1028 (2010)
Man, T.Y., Mok, P.K.T., Chan, M.: A high slew-rate push-pull output amplifier for low-quiescent current low-dropout regulators with transient-response improvement. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, Exp. Briefs 54(9), 755–759 (2007)
Or, P.Y., Leung, K.N.: An output-capacitorless low-dropout regulator with direct voltage-spike detection. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits 45(2), 458–466 (2010)
Guo, J.P., Leung, K.N.: A 6-μW chip-area-efficient output-capacitorless LDO in 90-nm CMOS technology. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits 45(9), 1896–1905 (2010)
Zheng, C., Ma, D.: Design of monolithic CMOS LDO regulator with D2 coupling and adaptive transmission control for adaptive wireless powered bio-implants. IEEE Trans. Circuits and Systems I, Reg. Papers 58(10), 2377–2387 (2011)
Ho, M., Leung, K.N.: Dynamic bias-current boosting technique for ultralow-power low-dropout regulator in biomedical applications. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II 58(3), 174–178 (2011)
Ho, E.N.Y., Mok, P.K.T.: A capacitor-less CMOS active feedback low-dropout regulator with slew-rate enhancement for portable on-chip application. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, Exp. Briefs 57(2), 80–84 (2010)
Leung, K.N., Ng, Y.S.: A CMOS low-dropout regulator with a momentarily current-boosting voltage buffer. IEEE Trans. Circuits and Systems I, Reg. Papers 57(9), 2312–2319 (2010)
Milliken, R.J., Silva-Martínez, J., Sánchez-Sinencio, E.: Full on-chip CMOS low-dropout voltage regulator. IEEE Trans. Circuits and Systems I, Reg. Papers 54(9), 1879–1890 (2007)
Ramírez-Angulo, J.: A novel slew-rate enhancement technique for one stage operational amplifiers. In: Proc. IEEE Midwest Symp. Circuits and Systems, Ames, IA, pp. 11–13 (1996)
Degrauwe, M.G., Rijmenants, J., Vittoz, E.A., Man, J.J.D.: Adaptive biasing CMOS amplifiers. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits SC-17(6), 522–528 (1982)
Nagaraj, K.: CMOS amplifiers incorporating a novel slew rate enhancement circuit. In: Proc. IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conf., pp. 11.6.1–11.6.5 (1990)
Ming, X., Ma, Y.-Q., Zhou, Z.-K., Zhang, B.: A high-precision compensated CMOS bandgap voltage reference without resistors. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, Exp. Briefs 57(10), 767–771 (2010)
Rincon-Mora, G.A.: Active capacitor multiplier in miller-compensated circuits. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits 35(1), 26–32 (2000)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Ming, X., Zhou, Zk., Zhang, B. (2012). A Low-Power Ultra-Fast Capacitor-Less LDO with Advanced Dynamic Push-Pull Techniques. In: Mir, S., Tsui, CY., Reis, R., Choy, O.C.S. (eds) VLSI-SoC: Advanced Research for Systems on Chip. VLSI-SoC 2011. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 379. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32770-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32770-4_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32769-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32770-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)