Low‐voltage bulk‐driven input stage with improved transconductance

A low‐voltage input stage constructed from bulk‐driven PMOS transistors is proposed in this paper. It is based on a partial positive feedback and offers significant improvement of both input transconductance and noise performance compared with those achieved by the corresponding already published bulk‐driven structures. The proposed input stage offers also extended input common‐mode range under low supply voltage in relevant to a gate‐driven differential pair. A differential amplifier based on the proposed input stage is also designed, which includes an auxiliary amplifier for the output common‐mode voltage stabilization and a latch‐up protection circuitry. Both input stage and amplifier circuits were implemented with 1 V supply voltage using standard 0.35µm CMOS process, and their performance evaluation gave very promising results. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.